Nomansland
by GreatKateZonkeyMachine
Summary: Ever gotten lost on a winter night and felt completely, utterly alone? Ever met a Ten Man? Have a holly-jolly Christmas, Reynie. Co-written with Kahlan Aisling.
1. Prologue: The Sparrow in the Shrubs

_"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."  
~ Lemony Snicket_

**Prologue: The Sparrow in the Shrubs**

In a city called Stonetown, on the east coast of Massachusetts, there was a house. It was not a humble house – it towered over the rest in the area, and boasted intricate antique designs – but it was homely. This house was surrounded by an iron fence and gate, which was in turn lined with rosebushes. One of these bushes, the largest of them all, had a bird's nest in it, over which a sparrow was busily fluttering about. The bird was preparing to fly south, for it was getting colder every day in Stonetown. The first snow was predicted for tomorrow.

The sparrow stood on her nest and began fluffing her feathers. She would sleep tonight, and begin the journey tomorrow. She did not glance down into the bush, and she was not expecting any kind of danger.

Without warning, a yellow object zoomed up from inside the rosebush, so fast that it was a blur, and missed the sparrow by millimeters. Chirping in alarm, it took to the air and fled.

"Damn," said Crawlings. "I almost had it!"

His business partner frowned. "You just wasted a perfectly good pencil on that bird," he said. "What if you need it later?"

"Oh, don't be such a worrywart, McCracken! It was only a bit of sport. Besides, we've got a dozen of those pencils."

McCracken turned his cold eyes back to the woman who stood guard in front of the house. "And what if you need a dozen and one?"

Crawlings didn't answer. "Look," he said. "She's not even watching! Why don't we just go in through that window?"

The other man shook his head. "Security. Silent alarms. Milligan. I told you, we have to wait until Bane is guarding the front yard."

"But—!"

"Calm down! He'll take care of everything tomorrow night. When he gives the signal – and only then – we move in."

"Yes, I _know _that, but why all these preparations? Why not just go in through the window tonight and take them?"

"Because Milligan is in there tonight. If the alarm is raised, we'll have no chance of shaking him off – we'll give away Mr. Curtain's position! Now do your job, and scout."

They were both silent for a while as they surveyed the property, analyzing doors, windows, shadowy places. Then Crawlings snorted to himself. "Pff…_Bane_…" he scoffed. "How does Curtain know he can trust that little weasel, anyway? He's a coward, a rat. If he's willing to double-cross Benedict, then why not us?"

"You're right, he doesn't have any real loyalty – he just goes along with the highest bidder – but his being a coward also works to our advantage. He's got no fear of Benedict. Benedict would never harm anybody. But he knows that _we_ might snap him like a twig, so he doesn't want to disappoint us." McCracken cracked his knuckles. "All the same, I'd like to get a crack at him at some point or another."

"Can we go back now? It's freezing out here."

"Alright, fine – but remember, be back here at ten o'clock sharp tomorrow night, and don't forget to bring the g—"

"Who's there?" said Ms. Plugg warily. She moved toward the brush.

"Damn," said Crawlings again, and the two men melted away into the darkness.

_"__Something wicked this way comes."  
~ William Shakespeare_


	2. 1: Pancakes and Poe

A/N (s):

_GreatKateZonkeyMachine – Well, the cat's out of the bag. Kahlan and I have been working on this little bit of holiday misery since September, and will likely continue to be wrapped up in it through to the spring. I haven't co-authored anything before (unless you count the random little one-page comedic drabbles my friend Aline and I write in science class…Never mind. Long story.), and neither has Kahlan. Don't let this lighthearted chapter fool you, we just wanted something for you to come back to when the rest of the story gets too terrifying for you to bear (ASOUE, anyone?). _MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

_Hmm. I just read this chapter again, and I realized that there's kind of a Kate's-blue-eyes motif going on. Interesting, but unintentional._

_Kahlan the Dream Spirit __**– **__This is the first thing I've ever co-written, and I have to say that, by the looks of the outline, it's going to be highly entertaining to do. I don't know if it'll be entertaining to read, but I have confidence... This chapter entertains me simply because it reminds me of how my family's Thanksgiving dinner went. There wasn't any snow, unfortunately, but everyone was trying to help everyone else and getting underfoot. Luckily, this year our stuffing didn't explode (it did last year, long story...)._

_In all seriousness, this chapter was written more carefully than you might think. We wanted to give a sense of how happy and soft their lives are; for now, Reynie concerns himself with things like the Calories in maple syrup and how funny Mr. Bane's face looks when he's angry. That's all about to change._

Disclaimer: **Kahlan the Dream Spirit doesn't own anything worth noting. Great Kate Zonkey Machine, however, recently purchased the rights to MBS, Quidditch, the month of December, Queen Cleopatra, and the Smithsonian with his many billions of dollars.**

Warnings: **Violence, no holiday spirit, no humor, Vic Morgeroff, character death, and trochaic octameter.**

_**-**__**N-O-M-A-N-S-L-A-N-D**__**-**_

_** CHAPTER – 1**_

"Pancakes and Poe"_  
or, First Snow_

**::::::::**

**R**eynard Muldoon wasn't necessarily a huge fan of snow.

You couldn't accuse him of disliking it, of course. One of Reynie's most precious memories was of Christmastime with his friends in Mr. Benedict's house, throwing snowballs, eating lukewarm soup that seemed piping hot, Kate catching a cold and then infecting the rest of them... Constance had gotten so bad that Kate had played a joke one afternoon by "quarantining" her—essentially locking her in the room they shared. Mr. Benedict had laughed himself to sleep for a few minutes at the rhyming threats she'd shouted from inside, Milligan had cracked a smile, and even the stern Number Two hadn't been able to resist at least one chuckle. In fact, the only one not amused by the affair was Constance herself, which Kate had discovered the next day when she found grape jelly covering the inside of her bucket.

But about the snow.

Reynie didn't really mind it. Kate had a knack for making very secure snow forts (she'd put a roof on one once, though it had collapsed within the hour on Reynie's dismayed head) and making the best snowballs Reynie had ever seen. You always wanted to be on her team, because unless you had Rhonda (who was also a formidable opponent in snow-related warfare) you didn't stand a chance against the former acrobat. Kate had a reputation in that respect.

But snow was also cold and inconvenient, and sometimes the weather got so bad the children had to be cooped up in the house at all times. This wasn't pleasant, because they were cooped up most of the time anyway; Constance had once written a poem comparing it to the Waiting Room, the Bastille, Alcatraz, Mordor (Kate was to blame for her watching _that_ movie), and the local dog pound. Kate had taken the poem, set it to a tune, and went around singing it non-stop until Rhonda had broken down and told her that if she didn't stop immediately, she'd wish she actually _was_ in all of those prisons, because they'd be better than what Rhonda was capable of instituting. Reynie, for his part, had believed every word. Rhonda could be frightening when she chose, even for her height, stature, and quaint appearance.

It was snowing now, when Reynie woke up, and he decided that he was glad to see it. It gave the room a nice Christmas-y feeling, the kind that a house like Mr. Benedict's was supposed to have, and was coating the lawn in a fine white powder that would be perfect for molding snowballs. At least, he thought so—Kate insisted that there were different types of snow and the efficiency of your snowball depended entirely on the quality of the base snow.

He laid there, snug under the blankets, for a few minutes before remembering that if there was light enough to see in December then it had to be late, and someone would be making breakfast by now. If he wanted to eat, getting a move on would be a good idea.

After summoning the willpower to hoist himself out of bed, Reynie glanced out his bedroom window and grinned at what he saw. Kate should be pleased, he thought. He climbed down the bunk-bed ladder and glanced over at the boy sleeping in the bunk below: his best friend in the world—whom he liked to call Sticky—was equal only to Kate and Constance. Sticky was lying stomach-down in his bed, his right arm dangling off the side and his mouth slightly open. It was a strange position for a growing thirteen-year-old to be in, Reynie thought, and laughed quietly at the image before proceeding to his bureau. Weekend it may have been, and the holidays to boot, but he was not going to leave the room undressed.

Several articles of clothing (including a t-shirt _and_ a sweater—you could never be sure what the temperature was) later, Reynie crossed off December the eleventh on his calendar and ran downstairs. His roommate kept snoring.

As he was walking down, he could hear voices coming in the general direction of the kitchen:

"I'm sorry, Constance, _no_. There will be plenty of food soon."

"But _Rhonda_..."

Once in the kitchen, Reynie saw Constance Contraire, who was already dressed and had begun her daily occupation of aggravating Rhonda Kazembe, who was making breakfast, scurrying around the kitchen in a busy manner. Briefly Reynie wondered what had happened to Moocho Brazos, the usual household chef, but he smiled fondly at the two of them and sat down at the table.

"There you are!" Constance said crossly to Reynie, as though he were late. She was sitting in one of the old wooden chairs at the dining table, on top of an added stack of books so she could reach the table. "Tell Rhonda to make me some pancakes!"

"Good morning, Constance," he replied. The corners of his mouth twitched. Morning routines were the same, regardless of the season.

Rhonda sighed as she continued beating egg yolks with a whisk. "Good morning, Reynie. I'm afraid I'm terribly busy this morning—making breakfast for ten, you know."

"Only ten?" Reynie frowned. "Aren't you eating?"

"Oh, yes! There's just bound to be someone who isn't—Milligan on a mission, or Mr. Benedict working with that awful Whisperer—and then if I cook for eleven there'll be an extra meal that I'll end up having to give to Constance. And then she won't eat more than a bite and it'll get thrown away."

Constance scowled in agreement. It was her normal, everyday scowl, so Reynie knew she was in a good mood. And who wouldn't be, with Christmas on the way and snow falling outside? And Rhonda cooking... Since Moocho had come along, Rhonda never cooked anymore. It was a nice change.

Reynie gave her a sympathetic look. "Would you like me to help?" he asked, considering just how many people ten people were.

"No, I'm fine. I just can't make pancakes for Constance." Rhonda was shifting to the stove-top now, where she already had something sizzling in a pan. Several somethings, actually.

Reynie stood and walked over to the counter, beginning to pull out ingredients and sorting them on the island in the middle of the room. "Here, I'll do it—unless you don't want her to have them, that is."

Rhonda looked at the mutinous expression on Constance's face. She decided that she was in too good a mood to have to deal with the toddler at the moment, and it wasn't an unknown fact that she would have plenty on her hands once Kate got here. Kate was always hungry. "That would be quite helpful. Thank you." She caught a piece of toast with one hand, while flipping an omelet in a skillet with the other. Reynie was impressed with her prowess in the kitchen; she never seemed to stop moving. There was something of a rhythm to the whole business.

He pulled out a mixing bowl and poured the powdered mix into it; normally he would have made the batter from scratch, but because of Constance's glare and the pencil and paper she'd gotten out, he decided speed was more important than artistry. He mixed in a few cups of water and then went searching in the refrigerator for some eggs. They were always short on those. He hoped that Miss Perumal had remembered to buy extra at the store...

Rhonda, meanwhile, was busy trying to set the table while flipping more omelets and keeping the rest of the toast from burning. It was a feat worthy of Heracles, Reynie thought with a grin as she pulled out a stack of plates and began to set the table. Everything the people in this house did was a feat worthy of Heracles. Everything from defeating Curtain to handling Constance to feeding a dozen people give or take.

"It's too bad Kate isn't here to help," he said to Rhonda, wondering after he did if she was too encumbered to speak.

Apparently she wasn't. "That it is," she replied briskly. She completed a circuit of the table by ending with Constance's seat. The tiny girl lifted her pencil and paper without emotion as Rhonda set a plate down. The plate was immediately shoved over in favor of the insulting rhyme she was likely composing. "Kate could have set the table," Rhonda continued.

"Not the way you like it set."

Rhonda shrugged—or maybe it just seemed that way, since she was lifting plates of food from the counter and bringing them to the table. "It would have been set, and that would have been helpful, regardless of the style it was done in." Reynie wondered if Rhonda had ever seen Kate set the table before he himself had had access to it and rearranged the entire setting. Kate was a very tidy person in most respects—except that, when setting the table, she more often than not forgot where things went and left things behind or other such instances. Most times she forgot the napkins. Sometimes the cups. Once she'd forgotten the plates**—**though that was on a particularly distracting occasion involving a turkey that had nearly set the house on fire.

"I'll make sure to get in a line or two about Kate," said Constance, who was scribbling intently on the paper now. She had uncommonly surprisingly good handwriting, thanks to her career as a poet, belied by her stubby arms and pudgy hands.

"What's the poem about?" asked Reynie as he cracked the eggs into the bowl.

"How slow everyone is when it comes to food," Constance said proudly, "in trochaic octameter, after the style of Edgar Allen Poe." She frowned. "Do you think 'bugger' rhymes with 'sugar'?"

Soon, Kate Wetherall herself came walking down the stairs on her hands. Reynie smiled at the way she quickly and expertly maneuvered around the table. She passed by Constance—shoving the chair when the tiny girl muttered "Show off"—and came beaming into the kitchen. "Morning, Rhonda," she said cheerfully. Reynie was now stirring the batter and nearly had it ready as she walked over to where he was. Then she punched the back of his leg by way of a morning greeting, causing his knees to buckle. Consequently, he ended up falling painfully and dumped all the pancake batter on Kate.

"What was that for?" they both yelled, Reynie rubbing his knee in pain and Kate wiping the batter off her face. Then they both yelled their earnest apologies before bursting out laughing. Rhonda stood over them, making _tsk_ing noises and shaking her head for a split second before continuing with her business. "Please clean it up, you two," she called. Kate, still laughing, took the mixing bowl off of her head while Reynie began to search for the towels.

"Hel_lo_?" Constance grouched from the dining room. "I'm not seeing what's so hilarious. What about my _food_?"

Sighing in unison, Reynie started making some more batter and Kate went off to get a mop—right-side-up this time.

The next person downstairs was Mr. Benedict himself, dressed in his usual green plaid suit. He greeted everyone cheerfully ("Constance, my dear! A new poem have we? In trochaic octameter, no less" - Constance beamed) but kept walking down, toward the basement.

"Oh, don't tell me you have to go bury yourself away with that infernal machine_ again_," said Rhonda, slightly upset. Rhonda didn't like the Whisperer. Nor did anyone else. It had been invented by Mr. Benedict's brother, Mr. Curtain, and had terrible powers, but in Mr. Benedict's care, it had revealed potential to do good as well. Never the less, no one in the house was at ease with it, especially with Curtain still at large.

Mr. Benedict shrugged and kissed his adopted daughter on the cheek, smiling sadly. "I'm afraid so; my apologies, Rhonda." And he disappeared into the basement. Over the months of harboring the Whisperer, that basement had become a place that received few visits and many nervous glances. Reynie looked back at the mixing bowl and put it out of his mind.

A few minutes after Kate had finished cleaning up the pancake mess and Reynie had made a new batch—declining her help, of course—Sticky came downstairs and sat blearily at the table. Kate bounced in and took her seat next to him, grinned, then said, "Missing something?"

Sticky blinked in groggy confusion before his naked eyes widened and he replied, "Oh! That's why I can barely see." And he hustled away again, off to retrieve his spectacles. Kate disappeared as well, but Reynie didn't see where she'd gone; he was too busy making Constance's pancakes. When they were sufficiently browned on both sides (he actually thought they looked quite pretty), he stacked them onto a plate and carried it into the dining room, rather proud of himself. He wasn't reputably a good cook, after all, and making even the simplest things was cause for celebration.

But when Constance's plate was set before her, she didn't say, "Gee, thanks, Reynie!" or "Yum!" or even "It's about time!" Not that Reynie had expected her to—that would be showing too much gratitude for Constance Contraire. Even so, he did _not _expect her to wrinkle her nose and shout "THEY'RE NOT CHOCOLATE CHIP!" before pushing away the platter and fuming with her arms crossed over her chest.

Reynie sighed heavily, feeling Rhonda's pain. "How about I lather them in syrup for you? Would that console you a bit?" After all, syrup did have a frighteningly high sugar and Calorie ratio these days.

Constance humphed and uncrossed her arms. "Fine. I guess so," she muttered angrily, and then said a few words under her breath about things that weren't chocolate or chocolate-related, and how not receiving chocolate-related food stuffs when they were so _obviously_ expected was _very_ bad form indeed. Reynie dearly wanted to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was such a crime to make plain pancakes for a friend," but knew that it would not be wise.

"I heard that!" Constance yelled in outrage as he walked back into the kitchen for the syrup, which hadn't made it out to the table.

Reynie heaved yet another great sigh—something most people tended to do when Constance was around. He'd gotten used to her ways, but that didn't mean he liked or approved of them. She certainly was a strange girl in many respects. For one thing, she was only four years old. Her birthday was in a week, but five wasn't much less remarkable for someone who thought and spoke like she did. Constance had the temperament, manners and physicality of a toddler, but the intelligence of someone much older. Her gifts included a talent in poetry, and an amazing ability to speak her mind (and read others', meaning she generally heard what you had to say even if you refrained from saying it).

Reynie carried the bottle of syrup back out to the table and began to slather the already sugary pancakes with the sweet concoction. Before he was even finished Constance grabbed her fork and dug in, completely oblivious to the delicious breakfast Rhonda had made and was in the midst of putting out on the table. Reynie's adopted family, the Perumals, walked in, greeted everyone and sat down at the table. Sticky was back now, with his spectacles this time. He was followed by his parents, who earnestly made sure that Rhonda didn't feel insulted by Constance eating the pancakes. Feeling left out and a bit shameful, Miss Perumal promptly offered to help Rhonda with breakfast preparations, an offer she accepted eagerly. That left Reynie to sit down with his friends (minus Kate) and discuss whatever it was they discussed at breakfast.

Soon afterward, they heard raised voices coming from outside. One sounded very stubborn and like it would carry a red bucket; the other was recognizable as an unpleasant guard named Mr. Bane. When everyone present was staring, an irate Mr. Bane marched into the kitchen. Anyone who saw him at that point would have sworn in court that he was related to a tomato, or some other red vegetable.

"Would someone _please _remind Miss Wetherall that she is not to leave the house?" he said furiously, clearly aimed at Rhonda.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, I'll go and get her!" This was Number Two, who preferred to be called by her code name rather than her embarrassing given name, and who had just entered. She left, calling "Kate? Come in, child, it's freezing out!" A few seconds passed in which it was impossible to be sure what was being said, and in a minute, Number Two came wrapping her lemonade-colored shawl more tightly around her shoulders and saying "Brr!", accompanied by Kate, who was looking disappointed.

"But it's snowing outside!" the girl protested, her blue eyes extremely forlorn.

"Exactly!" snapped Number Two, helping herself to a banana from the fruit basket.

Rhonda, with a venomous glance at the retreating back of Mr. Bane, who had swiped a pastry when he'd thought that nobody was looking. Of course, she would've gladly offered a pastry to a guard passing through, but theft tends to make one feel less generous.

Reynie had seen the snow through his bedroom window. All the trees, roofs, cars, bushes and fences were covered in blankets of pure white (not to mention the driveway—he suspected that would be a job for he and his friends to shovel). It looked like a holiday card, and even more like a very fun day, albeit a cold one that would likely lead to a repeat of the Quarantine Incident. "Can't we _please _go outside later today, Rhonda?" he said imploringly from his seat next to Sticky, trying not to sound _too _pleading lest she use it against him in the future.

"Please?" added Sticky, who had no such thoughts of strategy in his head.

Rhonda bit her lip and looked away—only to find herself staring into Kate's huge, round, shining eyes.

Kate had this look that she gave you when she wanted something, this big-blue-pleading-eyes look that even the hardest heart would melt under. Reynie didn't know where she got it, but it often got her reprieves from her elders. The only ones unaffected by it were Mr. Benedict and Milligan; the Washingtons were especially susceptible.

Rhonda was not immune. "Oh...alright. Now leave me alone so I can finish making breakfast before it gets to be lunchtime," she finally said with a wry, sidelong look at them.

The puppy-dog eyes vanished. "Yes!" Kate said triumphantly, punching the air with her fist. She immediately began making plans and laying them out to the boys and Constance, her blue eyes twinkling in excitement.

::::::::

**"****W**ell, you know what?" said Kate, brushing off her gloved hands and standing back to admire her work. "I think it's a pretty good likeness."

Reynie nodded his approval, and also his amusement. "It's very realistic," he laughed.

"Who's it supposed to be?" Sticky inquired as he came over to look at the snowman. "Let's see... really skinny... dots all over its head... big round eyes... and what's that in its hand? A washcloth?"

"A polishing cloth," said Kate, giggling.

"But then who...?" His voice faded as he figured it out. He stuck his tongue in his cheek in an annoyed way, his tea-colored face going red. "It's me, isn't it?" he said flatly, rivaling even Mr. Bane's angry red face in his coloring.

Everyone but Sticky burst into laughter, rolling around on the ground despite the freezing snow. Sticky tried not to smile nervously himself, wondering what in the world he'd done in his past life to deserve this. But he had to admit, it was an excellent likeness. Though the nose was rather large...

"I had made one earlier," Kate explained through her tears, standing up and dusting off the snow, "but dutiful Mr. Bane felt obligated to destroy it. That man sure does earn his pay. I bet it's on his résumé: 'Will destroy any and all snowmen.' Anyway, I think this one's better; I didn't have a reference before."

There was a sudden angry scream—for a split second Reynie thought it was Mr. Bane. Kate looked up, grinning, and took a thick brown glove out of her bucket. An enormous and rather frightening bird was swooping down on them.

"Hiya, Madge!" said Kate happily as the peregrine falcon landed on her outstretched arm. "Good girl."

Madge screeched at them and flapped her wings (Sticky winced a little). She touched the ground lightly, and started scooping up snow into her beak.

When they had all stopped chortling at Kate's joke, Reynie bent towards the pile of snowballs that were the many Sticky-heads Kate had considered, looking (hopefully) innocent. He appeared to simply be examining them to the uneducated eye, but when he saw an opening he hurled one of the big snowballs at Kate, who had her back turned putting the perfecting touches on Snow Sticky. Unfortunately for him, Kate's reflexes were astounding and she ducked in the nick of time. The snowball lopped Snow Sticky's nose clean off.

"Ouch," said the original Sticky, his hand flying to his nose before he turned red again. Constance guffawed from her perch on the steps.

"Hey!" scolded Kate. "That's art you're defacing! Oh, you're going to get it now, Muldoon!"

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a very good idea to attack Kate with a snowball, lest she set in motion a volley of more forceful, expertly shaped snowballs. As it was, she chased Reynie around the yard—like a leopard—with just such a volley. Only when Reynie tripped over Constance, and Kate toppled on top of Reynie, did the chase cease.

"Sorry," chuckled Kate.

"'S'okay," Reynie said, trying to catch his breath and figure out if he was bruised from Kate's bucket and knees. Her blue eyes were sparkling deviously.

"You did deserve that, you know," she said.

Reynie laughed softly. She rolled off of him and they both sat up. Sticky was laughing at the two of them, and Constance was pretending to cry after Reynie had tripped over her.

Mr. Bane scowled from over at his post, undoubtedly wishing the silly children would stop throwing things and making such a racket. Kate stuck out her tongue at him.

"If only that creep were watching the _back _yard today," she said wistfully. "But no, we get eighteen more hours of _ick _in the front yard."

Madge flew back to her shoulder. They watched Sticky show Constance how to make snow angels for a while. The lesson wasn't going well, considering Constance kept doing it wrong and forcing Sticky into the snow. At one point she picked up a handful of some suspicious-looking yellow snow and put it in his face.

"You know," said Reynie, watching from the porch with Kate, "they're really making progress."

"In what?" Kate asked, looking up from her bucket (she'd been taking inventory; as she must every hour or so).

"Getting along. With each other."

"Oh. You might be right."

"Maybe."

Then Constance threw another yellow snowball into Sticky's face and Sticky pushed her down.

"See?" said Reynie.

And this was how their day ended: Constance and Sticky laughing and playing, Reynie and Kate sitting and talking and feeling slightly awkward, and Mr. Bane waiting impatiently and nervously for the night to come.

**::::::::**


	3. 2: Too Comfortable

A/N (s):

_GreatKateZonkeyMachine – This is my personal favorite chapter. It's the pivotal turning point in the story that leads to all of the subsequent events, and the idea for this chapter actually ran through my head before any of the rest of it; it was actually my inspiration for Nomansland. As Kahlan rightly states, she did write most of this chapter – but I'll have you know it was _my _idea!_

_Kahlan the Dream Spirit __**– **__Here's where the plot begins, along with all of the angst and torment Reynie goes through for the next sixteen chapters. Yes, we have a vague idea of the chapter numbers. Oh, and for the record, I wrote the vast majority of this chapter. ;)_

_**-N-O-M-A-N-S-L-A-N-D-**_

_** CHAPTER – 2**_

"Too Comfortable"_  
or, Moonlit Treachery_

**::::::::**

**R**eynie wasn't used to sleeping in uncomfortable places, per se, though he certainly didn't have much of an animosity towards them. When you went on life-and-death adventures, you couldn't afford to. He'd had to sleep in various places over the past two years—not the least of which being a rope bed in a long-abandoned cabin—and such a lack of routine had conditioned him to sleep on most any strange or uncomfortable surface.

His own current bed was actually quite comfortable itself, and almost nobody would have an objection to spending a night or two sleeping there. Not even Milligan or Kate, who habitually didn't like comfortable beds for being "too comfortable." Milligan stated that a bed which was too comfortable kept you from getting up in the morning and attending to the work that might need to be done; and after all, you could never know when someone might attack or sabotage you. Kate didn't like them because they "suck me inside and might smother me if I'm not careful." Reynie didn't see the sense in this, but it was Kate, and Kate did pretty much whatever she wanted, so on a hard bed she slept.

Reynie saw their point now. When you were trying to wake up, a comfortable bed didn't do you any favors.

"Reynie! Reynie, wake up!" Somebody was poking his nose, over and over again.

"Mm..." he groaned, wanting to know what the big deal was but not caring enough to leave Nod. He rolled over with his nose in the pillow.

There was a shove on his shoulder. "C'mon, Reynie, wake up!"

Reynie opened his eyes just a little bit, to see what it was the voice wanted, and then immediately shut them against the pain in his eyeballs. The imprints of a white light were left on the insides of his eyelids, and he groaned again. Where had that light come from? He couldn't very well wake up if he couldn't see the time...

"Reynard Muldoon Perumal, if you don't wake up this instant, I'm going to open the window and pull all of the blankets off your bed, and it won't bother Sticky because I'll pile them onto his bed."

The annoyed voice was sounding more familiar with every word it said. Who was it? Constance? Or Rhonda? The voice was young, feminine, but it had a bit too much attitude for Rhonda and not quite enough for Constance—

Ah. Of course. He pulled his hand out of the blankets into the cold air (the air was actually cold in the house), shielded his eyes with it, then opened them a bit. He could tell now that the light was coming from Kate's penlight. In the glare he couldn't see its owner, but that didn't matter. What mattered was—

"What in the world possessed you to get up, Kate?" he mumbled, slurring the words so that they came out in a rather hard-to-decipher tone. If Kate hadn't been his best friend and used to his groggy way of speech, she might not have understood him. Actually, if Kate hadn't been _Kate_ she wouldn't have understood him.

"Reynie," she whispered fiercely, "I think something's going on. Something suspicious."

_She's her father's daughter,_ Reynie thought, _naturally_. Kate was a bit jumpy about Mr. Curtain and his henchmen the Ten Men (though she would never for all the world admit to it), and this was not the first time she'd imagined something suspicious going on. Reynie had come to the scientific conclusion that being cooped up in the temperature-variant house had made her adrenaline search fruitlessly for an outlet.

"Did you come all the way up here from the maze?" Reynie asked with vague amazement.

Between the house front and the stairs, a grid of identical square rooms formed a sort of maze. In darker times, this had been a defense mechanism against intruders; nowadays, some of the rooms were used as lodgings for the Perumals, the Washingtons, and the Wetheralls, but the majority of the rooms were still part of that maze. Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance had once had to navigate the maze as a test of intellect.

"Yes, I did," said Kate impatiently. "So what? Focus, Reynie. I want you to come investigate with me."

"_Ugh_, but why me?" he grunted. "Why not Sticky?"

"Remember the last time?"

Reynie didn't need any further explanation than that. Kate always needed a person to vent to, and usually this person ended up being Reynie. Once it was Sticky, and he had barely been able to stay awake the next day, not to mention he had a huge bruise on his knee and a stubbed toe where he'd crashed unwittingly into a particularly high stack of books and fallen to the ground, with Kate trying to help him up and nearly yanking his arm out of his socket. Number Two hadn't let them hear the end of that, nor had Milligan. It hadn't ended well, and so now Reynie was the prime target for Kate's midnight antics.

"Then why not Constance?" he asked.

The look she gave him sufficed for an answer.

"Kate," Reynie said, a little bit more awake now but still nowhere near ready to sit up, "it's your imagination. Go back to bed."

"Reynie, I heard something," she said firmly, "and I want to check it out. Come with me or not, but I'm going and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Reynie groaned. Now she was playing to his conscience. If Kate went out and was right, something would happen to her and it would be entirely Reynie's fault for not "keeping an eye on her" as Milligan said. (Milligan couldn't be around all the time and trusted the sensible Perumals—Reynie included—to watch after her and make sure she at least didn't end up in a full-body cast. Reynie considered this consummately ridiculous, because if anything existed that could put Kate in a full-body cast, he and his adopted mother and grandmother certainly couldn't stop it.) "Kate," he said in a pleading voice, "it's the middle of the night—"

"Actually, it's only eleven forty. Nowhere near midnight."

Kate had her eye on the clock. Of course she did. "Put down the penlight," commanded Reynie.

When the blinding glare subsided, Reynie put his hand down and opened his eyes a bit wider. He could see Kate now, illuminated in the moonlight from the small window of his room. She was standing on the ladder that led to his bunk, her blonde hair unbrushed and pulled into a messy ponytail, her blue eyes in a frenzy. She'd pulled her coat on over a sweater and some jeans. Her penlight was in her hand, aimed down at the floor.

"Okay, now tell me exactly what happened," Reynie said, rubbing his eyes. "And be quiet, don't wake up Sticky."

Her head disappeared for a second as she checked on the sleeping boy below. She popped back up an instant later, with Reynie struggling to keep his eyes open. "He's completely out. It would take Constance standing next to him banging two pots together to wake him."

"Well, since we've tested the idea," Reynie muttered.

Kate proceeded with her story. "I saw some lights outside my window, Reynie,"

"Lights similar to _headlights going down the street?_"

Kate ignored him. "It looked like Morse Code, but I couldn't tell because I'm out of practice, you know? I probably shouldn't be, but we haven't worked on it for so long and I've always had trouble remembering the difference between _O _and _S_ –"

"Kate!" Reynie interrupted. "Suspicious activity?" Amazing how even in sleep he could keep on track better than Kate. She didn't mean to go off on a tangent constantly, of course, it was just one of the quirks that Reynie loved about her.

"Oh! Right. Anyway, I saw the lights and then I saw some answering lights from somewhere on the other side of the road. I bet I could've read those if I'd figured out it was Morse Code soon enough, they looked simple, but I didn't figure it out until I was halfway on my way here. Anyhow, I could see that there were lights coming on in one of the houses behind curtains. It was weird."

"Weird. Weird like two cars going in opposite directions."

"They _weren't headlights_, Reynie! And what about the lights inside that house?"

"Maybe someone was turning on a light to go to the bathroom or something."

"And someone decided to blink them on and off while using it? I don't think so. We ought to go investigate."

Reynie rolled his eyes (thankfully, Kate didn't see). This sounded like just another one of Kate's usual '_I heard a noise and looked out my window; there was a suspicious figure dressed in black and carrying a bag getting into a black car_'cases that cropped up every now and again. Only the worst part was, they generally sounded like they could have some validity to them, even though they most likely didn't, resulting in several cups of tea the next morning in an attempt to wake up. "Okay, Kate," he said, taking care to cover the tone with exasperation so that she wouldn't see the concern. "Let me get dressed and I'll come out with you."

Kate nodded, stepped down from the ladder, and slipped noiselessly out of the room. Two seconds later, Reynie was left in bed wondering if it had even happened.

A small tap on the door let him know that it had.

He groaned and sat up on his bed, accidentally hitting his head on the ceiling. "Ow," he said, and reached up. It wasn't forming a knot, but it he'd been getting up any faster it would have. It had also made a rather loud sound that woke Sticky.

"Reynie?" he asked; in his groggy tone it sounding more like "rehree."

"Go back to sleep, Sticky," Reynie whispered, climbing down the latter and heading over to the bureau.

Sticky's eyes were only half open, and they were cloudy with sleep as they blinked, trying to bring Reynie into focus. "Mm-kay…." he mumbled, before his snores began again.

Reynie shivered in the cold December air as he pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans. The material, having been sitting in the bureau all night, was cold on his skin. Then he slid his feet into his shoes—due to the icy temperatures on this floor he slept in his socks (clean ones, of course)—and grabbed his coat from the post of the bed.

Reynie opened the wooden door and slipped out into the hallway, which was colder than the bedroom if possible. Kate was leaning against the wall, tapping the ground with one foot and flipping the lid on her bucket repeatedly. Her expression didn't change when she saw Reynie. "About time!" she whispered. "I was worried you'd fallen asleep again. Actually, I was just about to come and get you."

Reynie blushed when he thought of what Kate might have unwittingly walked in on had she done that, and was glad he had come out when he did. He was also glad that, in the dark of the hallway, the red of his face wouldn't show quite so much as it would in broad daylight.

"Come on!" Kate grabbed his arm and pulled him off down the hallway at a brisk pace, expertly avoiding stacks of books. Reynie tripped over his own feet but managed to regain his balance and made an honest attempt to keep up. Luckily, when she got to the stairs, Kate let go of his arm in favor of pulling out her penlight again. The small beam of light penetrated the darkness down into the maze (which Kate had memorized the way through). It was nighttime, and since Mr. Benedict was no longer holding tests the mechanisms that turned the lights on in the maze were disabled, so that it would be nearly impossible to find your way through, memorized or not. Reynie was glad for the penlight.

But they weren't going to the front door, like if they were simply going for an outing. Kate took a left where she should have taken a right and went right where forward would have been a better idea, taking them around to the side, to a hidden doorway that could be used to get out of the maze if the front door was compromised. Kate felt around, found the doorhandle (it was inside the door and concealed with a clever piece of rubber), and pulled. The door slid sideways, and a tiny bit of light that was left over from the moon poured in. Reynie shivered as freezing December wind cut in alongside.

Kate didn't seem fazed by the temperature, though Reynie was huddled and trying to keep warm, and continued sneaking outside. He followed. As soon as he was behind her, Kate shut the door and locked it (she knew how it reopened) and then began to edge her way along the side of the large house, making her way to the front. Reynie didn't attribute such measures of stealth as she did, but he did take care to keep out of sight until Kate should give the word, because the last thing he wanted was for a guard to catch them.

The partially-solidified snow crunched beneath Reynie's feet as he walked, though Kate wasn't making a sound. How did she do it? he wondered. She must've been at least five pounds heavier than him. Marveling at her footfalls, he attempted to mimic them by stepping slower and more lightly. This only succeeded in making the crunching sounds longer.

Kate made her way to the corner of the house and poked her head out, observing the front lawn. Reynie stood behind her, shivering and wondering how on earth she wasn't cold. Was Kate affected by weather? She should have been, but maybe it was in her nature not to notice—after all, Kate never complained about anything, she considered it weakness. She was such a strong person... Reynie wondered if she didn't feel more strongly than any of the others, and whether it was harder on her because she never let herself cry (not visibly, anyway). That would be a terrible existence: to forever be oblivious to your own emotions simply because you wanted to remain strong for the collective. He probably wasn't doing her justice, he suspected, but that was how it came across to him. He'd have to ask her about it sometime.

Having resolved to do that, he promptly forgot about it. After all, asking Kate about feelings and emotions was something you didn't do if you wanted to remain at ease with her. She was her father's daughter in that respect.

Reynie gave a humongous yawn. "There's nothing out here, Kate. Let's go inside; we're going to catch pneumon-"

"Reynie!" Kate hissed in reply. She beckoned with her hand. "Look."

Reynie stepped closer, a bit alarmed at the urgency in her tone. He peeked over her head and almost gasped (actually, he would have gasped if Kate hadn't been quicker and covered his mouth at that moment, putting a finger over her lips to signal "quiet!")

Mr. Bane was trotting around from the back of the house, directly towards them. Hopefully he hadn't seen them yet.

"Quick!" Reynie hissed, starting back for the secret entrance. "Do you know what'll happen to us if he catches us out here at this hour?"

Mr. Bane would surely report them the very same instant, and the adults would not be happy. They utterly trusted the guards. Reynie had figured out over the years that trust had to be earned—the hard way—and that the only people he could trust in his life were his best friends, the Perumals, the Benedicts, and the Washingtons. (And Milligan, of course, but Milligan generally went unsaid, seeing as how they lived past dinner every day).

Kate grabbed his wrist. "Don't go back in!" she pleaded. "We haven't investigated anything yet!"

As she said this, a voice in Reynie's mind that he tried to ignore asked quietly _What was Mr. Bane doing behind the house? He was supposed to be guarding the _front_ yard tonight_. There was no time to debate, so he relented and let her drag him over to crouch behind the shrubbery around the border of the property.

Reynie adjusted a branch with an empty bird's nest on it to get a clearer view; a sparrow feather fluttered onto his shoulder. He watched the smallish man walk briskly over their footprints in the snow, not even troubling to look down at them because he was too busy tossing his radio up and down for entertainment.

_That's a bit foolish, _Reynie thought. What if it broke?

And sure enough, as if his thoughts had jinxed it, the radio suddenly went up a little too high, and then came down a little too low. It smashed on the ground and the batteries rolled in opposite directions.

There wasn't time for Reynie to notice Mr. Bane's strange lack of surprise or dismay at this, because just then, something warm and hard clapped over his mouth and yanked his head away from his lookout spot. It did not let go.

"Hello, ducky," hissed a nauseatingly familiar voice in his ear. "Did you miss us?"

He kicked out futilely at Crawlings, but the Ten Man laughed softly and pulled out something Reynie couldn't see. "Shouldn't you be snuggled up in bed right now?" Crawlings asked in a low voice. "Well, no worries. I've got another way of putting you to sl—"

Something white and red flailed out of the darkness and collided with the man's head. A split second later, Crawlings was on the ground, a cut bleeding on his bald head over the place where one of his eyebrows was missing, and Kate was standing over him, holding a horseshoe magnet and panting.

"Ten Men," Kate said, the hatred in her voice for the name she spoke as obvious as her bucket.

"But how...?" Reynie faltered, the surprise keeping him from phrasing words accurately. "The guards –"

"Bane was in charge of the front yard tonight," Kate whispered in clipped tones. "I told you there was something up!"

"Mrs. Plugg...?"

"My guess is that Bane took her out back there before he signaled the men."

"But what was the signal?"

"Probably him throwing up his radio and breaking it."

Reynie nodded, gulping. That would make sense.

"C'mon, we'd better get out of here. Where there's one Ten Man there's always –"

"Two," Reynie finished for her.

As if on cue, a number of other black shapes carrying cases that looked like something a businessman might have moved silently towards the house - not two, not three, but _four. _They wouldn't have been visible if they hadn't been made of denser stuff than the darkness around them, and were therefore just distinguishable from it. Nausea gripped Reynie as he realized that they had all emerged, without so much as a rustle of leaves, from the very ring of bushes that he and Kate were in now.

Two men made their silent way to the front door and pulling out cruel-looking metal objects; Reynie didn't know what they were, and he didn't think he wanted to. The others vanished around the sides of the house. "What are we going to do?" he asked in a small voice.

"Warn them," said Kate. "Are Sticky and Constance at a rendezvous point?"

Even in danger, Kate couldn't resist her secret agent terms. That small fact was a comfort to Reynie; that Kate could use such words made him feel like there was still hope, hope that they could get away. _There's no reason we can't, _Reynie told himself. _We've got the element of surprise, and they lost it._

But there was a problem. "Rendezvous point? They're still asleep!"

Letting out a restrained exclamation of frustration ("You didn't wake them up?" accompanied by a minor expletive or two), Kate stood quickly and made her way back to the hidden door even faster. She had already unlocked it and was sliding it open by the time Reynie managed to catch up. He slipped inside and she pulled it shut. She then ran on.

"Wait! Aren't you going to lock it back?" he asked her, hurrying after.

"There's no time," Kate replied hurriedly, thrusting two objects into his hands. "Here, take my flashlight and my spyglass and _go_! Get as far away from here as you can."

Reynie, almost in hysterics, pushed the items away. "Are you crazy? I'm not just going to leave you here!"

"You've got to, Reynie – please! I've still got my penlight; I'll need stealth more than anything. I'm going to wake up the others and get them moving towards the cellar."

Before he could argue, she had dashed into the darkness, calling behind her as she went: "And remember, meet us at the Monk Building as soon as it's safe!"

She left Reynie and proceeded swiftly through the maze to the second-floor landing. She considered ringing the emergency bell, but thought better of it: What if the Ten Men heard the alarm and blocked their escape? Her only advantage was surprise—and it wouldn't be very smart to forfeit that.

She slipped through the door like a shadow, casting her penlight around in the darkness. Stepping silently over a pile of old books, Kate moved toward the nearest bedroom, where she knew Rhonda would probably be sound asleep. She had already passed the rooms where Reynie's and Sticky's families were sleeping, but she figured they were in the least danger, being within the maze. Milligan was there too; she'd wake him next, he'd save them—

Then there was the unmistakable sound of glass breaking. It had come from an office room, the door to which was standing open. Kate instantly retreated into a corner and turned off her light. A brawny Ten Man climbed through the window and entered the hallway, almost as quietly as Kate herself, mere feet from her. He clicked open his briefcase, took something out, and proceeded down the hall. Kate waited and then ran swiftly up another flight of stairs.

Why wasn't the alarm going off? she wondered. Had something gone wrong with the security system? She could now hear muffled thumps, below, above, and around her. They were in the house. Now it was a race.

There was nothing for Reynie to do but run. And run he did. He sprinted away from the property, into the thin woods that faced the suburbs, unable to shake his terrible fear for Kate. He knew she'd take the others to a secret tunnel situated beneath a trapdoor somewhere in the center of the maze. His stomach squirmed when he thought of Ama. She was so old, and so slow….Did she have a hope of making it?

If they did make it, which he told himself they must, they'd go through the secret passage and eventually come to another underground tunnel in the house across the street, which led to the Monk Building. They had used that second tunnel when they first came here for Mr. Benedict's tests, Reynie remembered—so long ago...

_"Just where is here, anyway?" Kate asked. "Hey Milligan, where are we?"_

_Without looking back or slowing down, Milligan said, "Right now we're passing under Fifth Street."_

It was when Reynie hadn't had much of an idea what he was getting into, that he would soon be involved in a struggle with Mr. Benedict's evil twin Curtain for control of peoples' minds, all over the world. They'd beaten Curtain the last two times in a row, but could they a third time? Reynie didn't know, and it wasn't a pleasant thought.

He made good time, though probably not half so fast as Kate would have, running in the opposite direction of the street, towards a wild thicket of brush and trees. He ran through them, trying not to make noise and failing. He tripped and stumbled, faceplanted in the snow and felt its burn on his bare skin. He picked himself up again, though, because he had to get away. But running got harder as a stitch formed in his side, making every step torture. He flinched at his own frantic footsteps and wished, not for the first time and certainly not the last, that he was as physically able as Kate.

Back in the house it became obvious that people were inside searching for something. There were shouts, angry shouts, the angry shouts of men who can't find what they're looking for. They were not easy, in any sense of the word, for Reynie to hear.

Having traveled about a hundred yards, Reynie decided it was safe to turn on the flashlight. A moment later, he very nearly suffered a heart attack. The Salamander was parked an inch in front of him.

It was empty, and utterly silent. The flashlight beam shone on the dark metal, the armor of the horrible machine that towered over Reynie like a deadly beast, asleep.

"Oh, no," he said to himself. "Oh no, oh no. _Not_ good." _Not good. _

Reynie collected his wits and moved swiftly away from the great armored vehicle, covering the flashlight with his other hand. It took all his willpower not to sprint wildly again, which would have caused the flashlight beam to swing back and forth, attracting the attention of the Ten Men. When he felt his distance from everything was sufficient, he took out Kate's spyglass and squinted through it at the faraway house to see what the Ten Men were doing.

He couldn't see them in the darkness, not so far away, but he could hear them shouting to each other. They weren't bothering to keep quiet anymore; Reynie refused to think about what that could mean. They were getting angrier, Reynie could tell, and a few of them even seemed to be getting scared of something—what, he didn't know. There wasn't a sign of his friends anywhere.

Now they were slinking out of the house, gathering things up, taking things out of their cases and bags and getting supplies. Reynie was pleased, or as pleased as he could be in this situation, to note that they hadn't captured anyone after all – Kate must have gotten everybody out safely. Surely… He turned around and began to walk away. Taking the spyglass away from his eye and switching off his light, he trained his ears for the sounds of any Ten Men following him. He was distracted at once by a new light behind him...

He turned around, wanting dearly not to look but unable to stop himself. Raising the shaking spyglass back up to his eye, he watched the scene.

They were outside. Little lights were flickering now, like lightning bugs, but worse, because Reynie could see that they were flames, lighters for cigarettes and for birthday candles and anything else you could use a lighter for, and there were matches too, he could tell by the way they burned. And there was even something that looked like a flamethrower, though it was put away. The last man came out the front door pouring liquid behind him. Even at this distance, Reynie's nostrils were stabbed by the smell of gasoline.

The lights went in. Reynie couldn't see it anymore, but he knew what was happening now; he'd seen it plenty of times in illustrations and in books. The flames were beginning to go up around everything, their orange and yellow tongues feeding on the books that must have taken years to accumulate, the clothing that was all the Society had in the world, the spares for Kate's bucket, Constance's poems, Sticky's various accounts and drafts of their adventures, and Reynie's framed newspaper articles. Even Mr. Benedict's journal that he'd given to them before the Duskwort Incident, as it was called. The journal that was their instruction guide, that had led them to his hiding spot, across oceans and through continents, to Therbaakagen and finally to the island that always seemed to be Curtain's hiding place. They'd never know what Kate's lemon-juice scribblings said now.

Now he could see the flames as they rose, coming out of the windows and filling everything with an orange-red light, not yellow-orange like a campfire. The fire was devouring everything, and the men were leaving, they were _laughing_, because they'd gotten away with it, they'd done what they'd come to do, and how could they, how could they destroy Reynie's only home for as long as he could remember? Who were they that were so heartless?

He fell to his knees. The concept of his entire life going up in flames, everything that Reynie had held dear becoming nothing but a pile of ash, was terrible. It was impossible. It was inconceivable.

It was _happening_.

He began to sob and shake uncontrollably. Grief such as he had never felt before swelled in him. Everything seemed to be closing in on him, and yet it was like he was peering at it all from farther and farther away…. As he fell on the ground, smothered by shock, the last thought that ran through his mind was _There goes another bed._

**::::::::**


	4. 3: Something Wicked

A/N (s):

_GreatKateZonkeyMachine – More depression. More fear. More cold. This isn't exactly the most Christmas-y Christmas fic ever written, if you haven't caught on by now.__ For canon purposes, I want to clarify that the trapdoor in the maze was invented for this story and there's no evidence of its existence in the books. The tunnel between the Monk Building and the empty shed, however, is canon; it can be found in books one and three._

_Kahlan Aisling – This chapter is, in my mind, incredibly depressing and the hardest one to write so far. Zonkey Machine wrote most of it, thankfully. Enjoy!_

_**-N-O-M-A-N-S-L-A-N-D-**_

_** CHAPTER – 3**_

"Something Wicked"  
_or, Familiar Faces_

**::::::::**

**R**eynie spent the next quarter hour in a state of shock. He knew he was awake, and he was somewhat aware of everything around him, but it was like he was floating above his own body, watching himself numb without awakening. He knew what was going on, but his mind simply couldn't process it. He didn't notice the cold, or the flames, or the sounds of men searching for him and the rest of the Society. He was exhausted, cold, and emotionally drained. He no longer cared. Mr. Benedict's house, his first real home, had gone up in flames. It had been his sanctuary, his safe place, the one place he could flee to when things went wrong. And it was gone.

He didn't know how long he slept when he awoke, and it took him a few seconds to remember where he was and why he wasn't safe and comfortable in his bed, with Sticky snoring below him and Kate and Constance in the next room. Then he felt the cold and stiffness of a night spent out-of-doors and on the ground, and then it all came crashing back to him: the disturbance in the middle of the night, Mr. Bane, the Ten Men, the Salamander, Kate. And the fire… What callous monsters those men were! The terrible grief that had overpowered him before and forced him to succumb to an uneasy half-sleep was now replaced by powerful rage that scared even him. In that moment he hated them more than Curtain, more than Pressius, more than anyone else on the face of the earth. There weren't many people Reynie couldn't get along with, or tolerate, or even empathize with, but these men... these men didn't deserve to live, didn't deserve his pity or empathy. Tears of anger began running down his face before he had even consciously awoken.

He opened his eyes in an attempt to discern what time it was. He blinked away tears and tried to get a look at his watch. According to it, it was around ten o'clock. _Ten... and I haven't been found yet?_ he thought. _I wonder if anyone's found the house..._

Thinking about it was too much.

Reynie closed his eyes, but that only made it worse; as soon as his vision was snuffed out, he could see nothing but the horrible red flames, leaping up into the darkness around him and licking everything he held dear into oblivion. Opening his eyes again at once, he suddenly remembered another thing.

_"__Meet us at the Monk Building as soon as it's safe!"_

The instant this memory returned to him, so did the realization that he had no idea how to get to the Monk Building. From the orphanage, yes; from Mr. Benedict's house, he might as well've been trying to find the Fountain of Youth, and he didn't know how to find the orphanage from Mr. Benedict's house either. He screwed up his face, trying to think. If only Sticky were here….

_"Right now we're passing under Fifth Street." _Under Fifth Street…

He knew where Fifth Street was.

He jumped to his feet—his limbs were stiff and cold—making his head swim, and bolted off in the direction of Mr. Benedict's house, praying to whatever deity was watching over him that the Ten Men had gone. He seemed to be lucky, as the Salamander had disappeared, and he supposed he should be grateful it hadn't spotted – or run over – him. There was still smoke heavy in the sky, and a great commotion was coming from the spot where the house had been burned down not half a day ago. He raised Kate's spyglass and looked through it.

There were two firetrucks and several police cars; as well as a few government inspectors he recognized from past dealings with. As much as he wanted to, Reynie knew he shouldn't go to meet them because he'd be delayed getting to the Monk Building. They would surely question him for at least two hours and would not let him leave, by which time his friends would think something had happened to him... He'd seen Kate worried; he definitely felt sorry for anyone who got in her way. She had all the prowess and passion of her father and none of the caution.

So he gave the premises a wide birth. With the assistance of the false kaleidoscope, he saw that everything – from the chimneys right down to the foundations – was gone, leaving a few piles of blackened rubble in its wake. _All of those books, _he thought miserably. _Our belongings... memories... _All the things he knew were floating somewhere overhead in the merciless black cloud. The trapdoor leading over to the cellar across the street was visible, but only to one who knew what to look for. Reynie's stomach squirmed uncomfortably at the inevitable thought of: _what if they didn't make it in time? Or worse: couldn't open it?_

By the time he reached Fifth Street, the sun was halfway up to the middle of the sky. He had to weave in and out of oncoming traffic on the streets (and once to duck out of sight when a bald man missing one of his eyebrows came strutting down the lane). The city was even more freezing-cold than he remembered, and he wished he'd thought to bring his gloves the night before. The tall buildings flocking the roads made the paths he took regular wind tunnels. The sky was grey and overcast from the snow the day before, and said substance crunched beneath his feet and coated everything you couldn't drive or walk on. Ice made the sidewalk slippery, and more than once he went too quickly on his numb legs and nearly twisted his ankle. Electric lights adorned the buildings, along with seemingly cheerful holiday displays and multiple speakers blaring "I'm Getting Nothing for Christmas" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." It was supposed to be festive, but it just made Reynie more melancholy than ever, especially when he saw the traditional charity worker dressed up as Santa Claus and ringing his bell to raise money for the less fortunate and homeless. Which, Reynie thought with a good deal of depression, he had just joined.

The street was more or less perpendicular to the path he'd taken to reach it. Assuming that the underground tunnel was relatively straight, he should eventually come to the Monk Building if he continued in the same general direction.

He walked that way for awhile, and then saw the top of a tall office building above the roof of a pizzeria. Quickening his pace – he was more than anxious to see whether or not they were okay – he noticed that the front door was ajar. That didn't seem like a good sign. Maybe it was just fear and grief acting up, becoming paranoia.

Maybe. Hopefully. Probably not.

When he walked inside, the most wondrous sensation washed over him: heat._ It must be nice to have a fully operational heating unit, _he thought sadly, remembering the broken AC that would never be temperamental again_._

The Monk Building was empty for the holidays with only a few people there on business, so he felt uncomfortably conspicuous as the blond secretary eyed him from her desk. He blushed and tried to look as if he had a good reason to be there. Shedding his overcoat, he quickly ascended six flights of stairs. When he reached the unmarked door between 7A and 7C, however, he hesitated before knocking.

It was a good thing he did, too. Because a split second later, he noticed that there was a large hole in the wood where the doorknob and lock should have been.

Reynie's heart caught in his throat. He knelt down slowly to peer through the hole, and saw the back of the only man of whom he was more afraid than Mr. Curtain: McCracken, the sadistic and burly leader of the Ten Men. He was ransacking the office in search of hiding children. He upturned a desk casually with one hand, causing a small crash and breaking one of its legs off. Behind him, another Ten Man – Sharpe – punched through the plaster wall.

"Oho!" he cried mirthfully. "McCracken, look at this!"

McCracken turned around unexpectedly, and those evil blue eyes sent an electric shock through Reynie's body. He looked away and pressed his back against the outside wall, taking deep breaths to calm himself and hoping against hope that McCracken hadn't seen him. He couldn't get his heart to stop beating, and he was sure the villains could hear it inside...

"What have we here?" said McCracken in the cool bass tones that always sent a chill down Reynie's spine. "A little secret alcove…"

Reynie closed his eyes and tried not to vomit his bowels. _They found the tunnel, _he thought desperately, finding it hard to breathe. _They _found _it…._

"And there's a door, too," Sharpe intoned with delight. In a few seconds, he had pounded it off its hinges and exposed the hidden passageway. Reynie waited to hear "Oh, _there _you are, chickies!" or "Sticky, Constance, run – I'll hold them off!" as his heart moved from his throat to his mouth.

But it never came.

"Where do you suppose this leads?" said McCracken.

"Allow me to find out," Sharpe replied.

The Ten Man set down his briefcase and shuffled down the passage.

_I hope he's arrested at the other end, _Reynie said to himself. The thought made him slightly hopeful that they might actually get out of this alive.

That feeling was promptly extinguished with the sudden opening of the office door.

Fortunately for Reynie, he had been very close to the door when it swung towards him, so it pushed him away, propelling him out of McCracken's line of sight. He just had time to dash into the room next door before the Ten Man looked behind his own door. He half-tumbled into the tiny office. Breathing laboriously, he got to his feet trembling and peeked outside, McCracken looked both ways and retreated back into room 7B. Reynie sighed his relief.

"Excuse me," said a grouchy voice right behind him. "May I help you?"

Reynie wheeled around, but then saw that it was only a squat, dark woman with bags under her eyes, sitting at her desk in front of an ancient computer. "Uh, no," said Reynie. "Sorry – just playing hide-and-seek."

"Well, this is no place for horseplay. Now shoo, before I call security. Take your friends with you!" she yelled just as Reynie was shutting her door.

Looking back through the hole – with more caution this time – Reynie saw McCracken pick up Sharpe's briefcase and, muttering about "as bad as Crawlings," run down the passage to give it to his partner.

Reynie waited _one_…

_two…_

_three…_

_four…_

_five…_

_six…_

_seven…_

_eight…_

_nine…_

_ten _seconds before stealing quietly into the office. The disguises were no longer hanging on the wall, but strewn across the floor. There was a pile of soil with a sad-looking fern in it, next to a broken planter's pot. Ripped paintings and upturned furniture were propped chaotically against the walls. Reynie's fists clenched at the Ten Men's utter destruction of Mr. Benedict's property. As if his home wasn't bad enough!

Anger gave way to dread as he thought of something else. If his friends were not here, and they were not in the passage, then they must have… have…

No, Kate would _not_ break a promise to him, especially such a serious promise as this…unless she was... was _dead_. Reynie felt numb. He put a hand to his forehead and staggered as the weight of this prospect hit him. What would he do now? He might have been able to survive on his own, but without his friends, what point was there to life? Without his family?

"_Reynie_?" said an extremely metallic, incredulous voice from just above him. Reynie, not expecting it, jumped and backed away with a small cry. "Sorry," it continued. There was the sound of quick unscrewing and the call "Catch!" and the vent above him completely slipped its moors. Reynie caught it and put it aside as the face of Kate Wetherall appeared, frantic and looking even more nervous than when he'd last seen her. Her hands and arms, devoid of her bright red sweater, appeared first, and then as they fell her head, shoulders, torso, and finally she slipped out entirely and landed with her hands on the ground. Her bucket was too bulky to fit, so it didn't come out with her. She flipped rightside-up and took it out of the vent, but it was without her ordinary cheer. Following her was a very red, very hot Sticky Washington, who stood on tiptoe to reach Constance and help her down.

"Are…you guys…_insane?_" Reynie whispered, weakly but happily.

Kate did not smile. Rather, she looked more indifferent than Reynie had ever seen her before. This Kate... this Kate was ready for battle. She rebuckled her bucket fiercely. "I couldn't find _anyone_, Reynie," she said, her voice trembling a bit more than she probably would have liked. "No one at all. Not even Number Two, and she's always up."

"They're just... gone?" he said weakly, his throat catching with the last word. He realized that he'd been counting on Kate to make everything right, to solve everything, because there was nothing Kate couldn't do.

Kate nodded. "And I couldn't search thoroughly because _they_ were inside. They came swarming in through the windows. I don't know why the alarms didn't go off, someone must have disabled them. I couldn't –" it seemed hard for her to state what she couldn't do, "I couldn't fight them all off, so I crawled into a vent and made my escape to your room. I woke Sticky and told him to go to the trapdoor while I gathered up Constance, but he was frightened so he went with me." Sticky found his toes very interesting at that part, but he didn't say anything or otherwise react. Constance looked as she always did: indignant. However, there was a trace of distress in her eyes. "We almost didn't get it open, it was nearly frozen shut. By that time the fire had already started – you saw the fire, right?"

Reynie nodded. His heart had risen again into his throat as he heard her account. Scared pricklings went up and down his spine, as if a Ten Man was aiming a laser pointer straight at his neck. He glanced back quickly, just to be sure, and was both relieved and unnerved to see no one. He felt a little shameful facing Kate again, but she ignored it. In fact, she was looking at him like she was waiting for orders.

Realization dawned on Reynie. Kate was only really good when it came to action, to _moving_ and carrying out plans. But she couldn't strategize for the long term; she had no idea what to do next. Without Reynie, she was as lost as he was without her.

"We should get going," Reynie said, wondering if he was saying the right thing. "Those Ten Men will be back. Maybe our friends are already at the police station and waiting for us," he added without much conviction. Mr. Benedict wouldn't do that, he knew. He wouldn't leave the children to fend for themselves, however well they might have planned. It wasn't in his nature to do such a thing; in fact, Mr. Benedict was reluctant to let them do anything without supervision or an assurance of complete and utter safety. This whole thing stank of a red herring; but Reynie didn't know where the lake was.

"Yeah," Kate agreed, without any emotion at all. She was ready to carry out any orders she saw sense in.

As they walked out, she asked, "How did you know it was safe to come in?" She was walking first, keeping a fierce eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Their ears weren't reliable, Reynie knew – not in the least. Not if Mr. Curtain was around with his noise-cancellation technology. Kate's hawk-eyes were needed in a time such as this.

"They burned a hole through the door," Reynie explained. "I looked through and came inside after I saw them leave."

"Am I glad you did," replied Kate. "That air vent has restricted visibility. I had no idea where they were until you came in. Otherwise I might've come down any old time, and then where would we be?"

"Dead," Reynie said blankly. For some reason, it didn't bother him to state it.

Kate shuddered. She never shuddered, but she did this time.

"Hey," Reynie noticed. "Why aren't you and Sticky wearing warmer clothes, Constance?" That was bad – judging from the extreme temperatures outside, thin clothing – even the flannel nightclothes the two were wearing – wasn't going to cut it. He'd nearly frozen dressed as warmly as he was.

Constance looked down at her red raincoat and scowled. She opened her mouth to say something, but Kate interrupted. "There wasn't time," she explained for the toddler. "We had to get out of there ASAP."

"And now your winter clothing is gone." Reynie stopped walking in his anguished reverie, staring without seeing through a grimy window on the stairwell. _This is bad, _he thought. _Really bad. As in, Battle of Breed's Hill bad. We won, because we got away, but we might as well not have._

Kate put her hands on Reynie's shoulders and tore him away from the window. He didn't resist, instead letting her guide him away to one of the janitorial closets and sit him down. Kate and Sticky sat down beside him, but Constance refused to touch the disgusting floor.

Moods are contagious. That's just the way of them. It only takes one person to say they're scared, and then everyone else is, too. With the Society, the mood went even deeper. They were so attuned to each other and the world around them that, if one of them was feeling worried and it showed even a little bit, it would spread to everyone else. Kate had let herself be worried, and now everyone else was, too.

"Reynie, everything's going to be fine," Kate said.

"We'll find everyone," said Sticky, sounding a lot more confident than he probably was. "We'll rebuild. We'll defeat Curtain once and for all."

"Come on, George Washington," Constance said in a huff, "we'll never beat him. All the horrible things he's gotten away with! And that's just in the past two years. Who knows what he's done before that? He's invincible."

Kate glared at her and might have slapped her if Reynie hadn't spoken at that moment. "She's right," he said glumly. "We'll never defeat Curtain. He's just too powerful."

"You can't say that!" Kate yelled, slamming her fist on the floor and forgetting that she wasn't supposed to be loud. Sticky shushed her, looking frantically from the door to Kate and back again. "You can't say that," she repeated in a quieter tone. "We've beat 'em before and we'll do it again."

"We're hanging on by a thread," said Reynie. "How could we possibly win when we've basically lost already?"

"We haven't lost," said Kate emphatically. "We got away. It may have been pure luck, but we were ready for them."

"They may have the upper hand _now_, but we're still fighting, aren't we?" said Sticky, trying to boost his spirit. "It's not over yet. The _Reconquista_ took eight hundred years."

"But we won't be running from the Ten Men for that long," Kate assured Constance, seeing her horrified expression. She looked around at her friends, and their hopeless faces frustrated and depressed her. "We're the Mysterious Benedict Society, for crying out loud," she said forcefully. "We're not gonna let him get away with this!"

Sticky nodded fervently, but Constance continued to fume and Reynie just stared off into space in a manner resembling shock. "What do we do?" he finally asked, looking away from their faces because he knew they would look shocked at _him _asking _them_ what to do.

"We can't go to the authorities," Kate said immediately.

"What?" said Sticky, deflated. Then he added, somewhat indignantly, "Why not?"

"Well, there's no way in hell Milligan would just _leave_ in a situation like that, especially without telling me," Kate said resolutely. "And I'm confident I got to Number Two's room before the Ten Men did, unless they launched some secret attack before the fire. So that pretty much rules out them being kidnapped."

Reynie exchanged a fleeting, skeptical glance with Sticky.

"Which must mean they left some time last night, _before _the attack. If whatever they were doing was so top-secret that they couldn't even tell _us_, I don't think they'd want a bunch of detectives trying to find out about it. And that's why we can't go to the police yet: We have to make sure their secret isn't compromised," Kate continued, sounding more like an adult than she'd been in a while.

"Okay, so we know what we can't do," Constance said with a slightly quivering lip. She was on the verge of frightened tears. "What _can _we do?"

"I think," Kate mused, "we should focus on food, clothes, and shelter for the time being."

"I'm with her," Reynie said for the first time in a while. "Right now, our number one priority needs to be eluding capture and staying together."

"But where are we _staying?_" said Constance, her voice becoming shrill and high-pitched. "Where are we _sleeping?_ I am notliving like a hobo!"

"Sorry, Connie-girl," said Kate consolingly. "Looks like we're gonna have to for a while."

Things looked bleak to Reynie. The phrase _something wicked this way comes _flashed through his mind, though he couldn't at the moment remember who had said it, who had written it down and made it famous. But it perfectly described their situation at the moment.

_Us versus Curtain, _Reynie thought. _And Curtain appears to be winning._

Stonetown was one of the largest metropolises in the world. Their friends could be anywhere…as could their enemies. The Mysterious Benedict Society looked out into the hallways of the Monk Building and felt totally, consummately alone.

::::::::

**A**fter answering many questions and a great deal of insisting that he knew nothing, Mr. Bane slinked away from the scene of the arson at Nicholas Benedict's home. Though it was ten below, he was perspiring. He scratched his neck nervously.

He walked away, leaving the blackened rubble and the inspectors behind, their sounds growing faint. He thought of a nice cup of hot whiskey, something to congratulate himself and ease his nerves. There was nobody around; at least, he didn't think there was—

An enormous man came out from behind a tree and stepped in front of him. "Good morning, Mr. Bane."

Mr. Bane stumbled back and let out a small squeal. "McCr-Cracken!" he cried. "I d-didn't see you there."

McCracken laughed. "I should hope not."

"What is it?" said Mr. Bane uncomfortably.

"Well, you see, Mr. Curtain isn't very happy with the way this whole project turned out." McCracken half-grinned, in a you-know-how-the-boss-is sort of way. "He was expecting there to be something _in _the house when we searched it."

Mr. Bane looked at him with a mixture of fear and puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

McCracken set down his briefcase and gave Mr. Bane a small, patient smile. "Did you tell them we were coming?" he asked calmly.

Mr. Bane blanched. "Tell them! No. Of course not!"

"Then why was the Whisperer gone?"

"Gone? But it was…"

"The Whisperer was not inside the house, nor was a single human being."

Mr. Bane started backing away. "I told you…"

McCracken walked forward. "You told us that Milligan would be away, but you didn't say _everyone_ would be away."

"I… I didn't know," said Mr. Bane feebly.

"Where is the Whisperer, Mr. Bane? Where are the children?"

Mr. Bane swallowed. "I don't know."

McCracken looked at him and sighed, a small, amused smile playing on his lips.

Mr. Bane gulped again, and rubbed his neck.

"Mr. Bane, is something wrong with your throat?" McCracken asked. "It seems to be bothering you."

"What? Oh, no…"

McCracken flipped up his collar, loosening the tie around his own neck. "You failed us," he said reproachfully.

"I—"

McCracken was slowly unknotting his necktie. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid Mr. Curtain has decided to…" He chuckled. "…let you go."

McCracken pulled off the tie, revealing a serrated, jagged-tipped metal hook on the end. He waited until Mr. Bane realized what was about to happen, and then swung the tie like a whip. The hook ripped open Mr. Bane's throat. Mr. Bane gasped and fell on the ground, unable to utter a scream. McCracken smiled at him with his very white, perfect teeth.

**::::::::**


	5. 4: A Hazy Shade of Winter

AN (s):

_GreatKateZonkeyMachine – Incidentally, the town where I live is currently experiencing 30-degree weather and endless rainclouds. This chapter was not difficult to write._

_Kahlan Aisling - There's this one cameo (advice column) article on the Script Frenzy website that says when you get stuck, have a new character bang down the door and start shooting everything. That's the basic idea, anyway. See if you can find the scene where I got stuck going one direction and Zonkey turned it around in less than two hundred words. ;)_

_**-N-O-M-A-N-S-L-A-N-D-**_

_** CHAPTER – 4**_

"A Hazy Shade of Winter"  
_or, Clues Unfound_

**::::::::**

**F**ortunately for them, the children – Reynie especially – knew Stonetown quite well, at least well enough to know which parts were poorer. That meant that in certain areas, four children could wander aimlessly around and stop to rest on a sidewalk, street corner or alleyway and seem inconspicuous. They took to exploring, looking around for clues as to where the adults might have been. As they were passing an alley in the less reputable part of town, Sticky said sadly, "Look at these people."

For they were not alone in their situation. There were several people dozing on the edge of the street, or just sitting looking gloomy. Cigarette smoke was heavy in the air (so much that Constance threw a fit over it), among other smells. Kate could not help giving these people sympathetic glances, while Reynie seemed indifferent and, almost appallingly, unconcerned.

"Look at _us_," he said. "If we don't find the others, we'll be spending the night sleeping next to a dumpster."

"Well, yes," Sticky replied, "but I'm sure we'll find them soon. And we have money, and food –"

Reynie looked sharply at him. "You might want to be more careful when you talk about that sort of thing," he snapped, and led them off down the street. Constance toddled after him and coughed. Sticky trotted up, not finished with his argument.

"Still," he said. "These people have been out here all their lives!"

Kate stopped and sighed before saying, "You know, Sticky, maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. But right now _we _have a problem bigger than theirs. We're all but orphans again, Curtain's searching for us, we have a stolen credit card –"

"It's not stolen, it's Rhonda's."

"In a court of law it's stolen, and if the cops catch us with it things won't look good." Kate narrowed her eyes.

Kate had taken Rhonda's purse from her bedroom, with a credit card and a fair amount of cash. The children figured they could use some of it to pay for the things they would need over the couple of days. At least, they _hoped _it would only be a couple days.

"Think about it, Sticky," Reynie continued. "To the police, we're kids who've gone missing after our home was burned down. They don't know who did it or where the adults are, and bodies haven't been found...as far as we know." He took a deep breath, already tasting the bitter words he was about to say. "What happened at Mr. Benedict's house was orchestrated by someone on the inside. _We _know it was Mr. Bane, but the authorities have no reason to believe that. And won't it look suspicious to find four kids, a stolen purse, no visible signs of harm, and to top it off, who didn't talk to the authorities immediately? I don't know about you, but if I was a police officer, that wouldn't look like innocence to me."

For a minute Sticky wanted to say something, and even opened his mouth to say it, but he couldn't argue with Reynie's logic. He had to admit, even though he didn't like it, that he was right. They couldn't claim kinship to Rhonda, and it would look suspicious if they were caught with her purse. And the treacherous Mr. Bane would frame them for his own crimes if they went to the authorities. He grunted "fine" and followed them off.

They were heading for a supermarket, not only to get something to eat but to see if they could locate gloves or something of the sort for Constance. The older three had become more concerned about her recently, because her pajamas and raincoat, while insulated, didn't keep out the cold as well as their own snow coats. As they walked in, Reynie happened to look at a rack of newspapers and noticed a headline that interested him.

"Hold on a minute," he said, and beckoned. Kate and Sticky saw what he was looking at and were immediately interested, and even Constance took a look-but then their shoulders sank. The article was about a fire, but not the one at Mr. Benedict's house.

"'_Forest Fire Rampages through Harbor Woods,'" _Reynie read aloud. "'_Yesterday emergency phone lines received reports of a wildfire in the wooded area against the coast, just off the shore of Nomansan Island. Firefighters arrived at the scene and the fire was extinguished. However, approximately two acres of damage have been reported. The _Stonetown Times _interviewed fireman Larry Dolmman…_' So they run a story about a forest fire, but not about Mr. Benedict's house?"

"The government probably doesn't want it publicized yet," Kate said reasonably. "They always wanted anything to do with us and Mr. Curtain everything kept secret from the public."

"But the forest fire has to do with Mr. Curtain, doesn't it?" said Sticky.

The others looked at him. "How do you figure that?" Kate asked.

He pointed at the newspaper. "The article says that the fire happened in the wooded area near the shore of Nomansan Island. That's the wood where Mr. Benedict, Rhonda and Number Two spied on the Institute through their telescope the year before last."

"You think it might have been the Ten Men?" asked Kate, turning to Reynie, instantly excited at the finding of their first clue. Sticky began to dig through his pocket for loose change.

"It's possible," Reynie mused. "But why would they want to burn those woods?" he asked, mostly speaking to himself. "Unless… No… no, that's stupid, never mind."

Before Kate could ask—though not so much as demand—what he meant by this, Constance rudely interrupted by shouting "Hel-_lo_! We're stranded in the middle of nowhere here! Who cares about dumb old forest fires?" She coughed.

"Constance is right," said Sticky before Kate had a chance to retort.

"Yeah," Kate grudgingly admitted. "We need clothes and food. How much money do you guys have on you?"

Sticky's pockets were empty, but then he called attention to Rhonda's wallet and credit cards currently in Kate's bucket. "It makes it all the more suspicious," Kate said darkly as she fished them out, "that she just left all her things lying around."

"It doesn't matter," said Reynie. "We know that she can't have gone far, but what about everyone else? We don't have any evidence they're around, or even alive."

The others were slightly taken aback by this ominous statement, coming from Reynie of all people.

They finally found enough money to pay for the newspaper and handed it to the guy behind the counter. He looked completely bored and like he didn't do anything but listen to heavy metal all day and drink all night, so Kate figured he wasn't going to care if he sold a newspaper to a thirteen-year-old. The others were silent while Kate paid for it, and then they walked outside to keep reading.

Sticky flipped through the pages as Constance coughed and Reynie concerned himself with trying to determine the adults' location. No matter how much he racked his brain he couldn't fathom where they might disappear to. Kate was tapping her foot impatiently, but also glancing at Constance in concern.

"Hey," Sticky said. "It's not headline news, but there _is_ something about the fire at Mr. Benedict's in here."

"That quick?" Kate asked, grabbing the newspaper from him. She cursed under her breath as she read. Sticky blanched.

"Is... is something wrong?" he asked.

"Yes, something's wrong," said Kate, glaring at the newspaper like she could set it ablaze. "The police know even less than we do."

"That's bad, right?" Constance asked.

"It's bad," said Reynie.

Constance gulped. "Very bad or just...bad?"

Kate said, "A shade below catastrophic."

"Very bad," the toddler decided. "Um, why?"

"Because," Reynie explained darkly, "if the government is letting news of the fire get out, you can bet that they don't think the Ten Men are involved. That means we're the only possible suspects. Mr. Bane is now their most trusted source of information. He'll frame us for everything. We definitely can't go to the police now."

The Society was quiet as they mulled over this solemn and scary pronouncement. "But..." whispered Constance, "...they're the police. Surely we'd be safe with them..."

"Mr. Benedict's house was the safest place we could have been, and look how that ended up," said Kate. "Not only could the police cause more problems than they'd solve, but the Ten Men could probably still get to us. The best thing for us to do is stay hidden."

"You know, Kate," said Reynie, "we haven't met all the Ten Men, but I'm sure they know what to look for. Is it really a good idea for you to walk around dangling that bucket?"

Kate looked affronted, surprised by his backward accusation. "What else can I do with it? We haven't got anywhere to store it. Don't you think I've thought about this?"

Mostly to break the gnawing silence, Sticky said "Was there anything else in Rhonda's purse?"

"A bunch of junk," answered Kate. "I haven't had time to look through it for something useful."

"Well, we have all the time in the world now," said Reynie dryly.

They sat down with the backs against the side of the store, and Kate pulled out Rhonda's purse. "Theater tickets," she said with a touch of sadness, sifting through its contents. "She was going to use these."

"Anything else?" asked Reynie.

"Not that I… Wait," said Kate. The other three Society members sat up straight at once. "Hold the phone…" She pulled something out of the purse, and it did indeed look like she was holding a phone: it was a small metal device with a numeric keypad and a long antenna sticking out of it. "What's this?"

"It looks kind of like a radio," said Sticky. He took his spectacles off to look at it. "Is it making any sound?"

Kate put the device up to her ear. "No," she said, perplexed.

It was quite a simple contraption, actually—simpler than any phone, radio, or walkie-talkie. It was nothing but numeric keys and antenna. There was a tiny dot on it that looked like it might be a light, turned off. Kate typed in a couple of numbers at random, but nothing happened whatsoever.

"Some broken old gizmo," said Constance dismissively. "Throw it away."

"No!" said Reynie. "We don't know what it is—it may be really important."

"It could be the key to Heaven," said Kate, "and it wouldn't do us any good unless we knew how to use it."

"Maybe we'll figure it out," Sticky said without much hope.

Kate put the device in her bucket and sighed. "We really need to get something to eat," she said. Constance sneezed. "And I think we should get something for Constance."

"I don't need anything," the girl protested, but it lacked her normal luster.

"Yes, you do," Reynie said firmly. "If you don't at least get something warm, and soon, that could develop into something worse."

Kate appraised him with suspicion. He seemed uncharacteristically pessimistic. _It must be rough on him,_ she thought, _suddenly having to live like this. _Then she looked over the rest of the Society; Reynie was basically fine, but his face was red and his teeth were chattering slightly. Sticky looked even worse for wear, especially since he wasn't properly dressed. In fact, only Kate was wearing enough clothing to keep herself properly warm in this weather. She pulled off her own gloves and handed them to Constance.

_I can't believe she didn't do that earlier, _Reynie thought, and then he immediately felt angry at himself for thinking something like that. "We _all_ need something warm," he continued.

"The people in that alley have survived," Constance harrumphed. "We can too."

"They've survived, but they're probably used to it," Reynie replied. "We're not, and as long as we have money, I say we use it. We need something warm and that's final."

Kate tried to think of something that would defuse the tension, but couldn't. So she merely turned to Sticky and punched his arm playfully. "Any ideas?" she said with a brave attempt at cheer. "You've got experience in this area."

Sticky turned redder, if that were possible, and looked somewhat nervous. He had always hated to be in the spotlight. Reynie felt a tinge of annoyance at his hesitance, but quickly beat it back. _Come on_, he thought, _You've always come through in a crisis_. To Reynie this definitely qualified as a crisis.

"Uh…" was all Sticky could manage.

Constance threw her pudgy fists on the ground in frustration. "Spit it out, George Washington!"

Sticky stammered piteously. Reynie put a reassuring arm around his shoulders.

"Well," he finally said, "in some hotels, they offer free complimentary breakfasts. I used to sneak into those during busy times and eat that. It's not very healthy a lot of the time, but it's food."

Kate nodded curtly. "Interesting idea… Well, you're the only one who would know."

"Excuse me?" Constance said, and coughed again. "I managed to live in a library for years."

Reynie spoke up. "True… If worse comes to worst, I suppose we could take a leaf out of your book. But right now we need food, and after that we need to find someone to stay with. Who do we know? Kate?"

Kate shook her head. "Sorry, Reynie. It was just me, Milligan, and Moocho."

"And where _is_ Moocho?" said Sticky. "He wasn't at the house the day everyone disappeared."

"He's in Spain for the holidays," Kate replied.

There was silence for a while as everyone thought. After five minutes during which no one made any progress, they agreed to turn to the more immediate matter of sustenance. However, Reynie could not stop his mind from constantly wandering anxiously back to their impossible situation (as, he was sure, neither could his friends). _This, _he thought uneasily, _has gone from a crisis to a catastrophe._

::::::::

**A**bout an hour later, Reynie, Kate, Sticky and Constance were sitting inside a four-star hotel, pretending to be with one of the many tourist families who came for Massachusetts's historical sites and such things. Sticky had been right; most of the breakfast _was _unhealthy, but it was warm, and Kate had managed to discern what would keep them full and what wouldn't, with Sticky's help. Reynie had his hands full keeping Constance in line. A harder task than it seemed, that was, and it seemed quite a difficult task.

"So where are we staying tonight?" Reynie asked Sticky, who was downing his sausage with Constance-esque rhythm. He looked up at Reynie as if confused for a moment, then swallowed, took a drink of orange juice, and thought for a minute.

Eventually he said, "Remember that book by E. L. Konigsberg?"

"Which one?" Kate asked. "There's a lot."

"_From the Mixed-up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler_," the boy recited. "The one where the kids run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

"Yes," Reynie said.

"I saw it on the shelves," said Constance. "Didn't bother reading it."

"Well, all of the museums in Stonetown aren't as tightly secure as that at all," Sticky began slowly. "And if we pick a lesser one..."

"Wait a minute here," Kate interrupted, putting her glass down on the table for emphasis. "We can't do that. It's a book, Sticky, and it would never work."

"Yeah, and I'm not staying in a stuffy old museum. Haven't you ever heard? The displays come to life at night!" Constance said, not loudly, but not without force.

Reynie sided with Sticky, out of mostly common sense but out of sympathy as well. He really was trying, and his plan for food had worked, hadn't it? "We don't know what's out there, Kate, and unless the Ten Men know how to predict our every move when they don't even know where we are, it's better than staying out in the open where people can find us. And honestly, I doubt the police are going to look there. Children have a reputation for disliking museums."

"But it would be obvious," Kate protested. "I mean, hiding out in a museum while escaping authorities? It's cliché! It's a step up from libraries or boxcars, but it's _predictable_, and in our situation we have to avoid predictability."

"You don't know that," Sticky said about the predictability factor, but he didn't sound as confident as he should have. Then he said, a bit stronger, "It might take a few modifications, and it'd be risky, but it's better than sleeping in an alleyway every night. Safer, too."

"A library worked for me," said Constance.

"Yes, but people weren't _looking _for you back then," Kate replied, looking indecisive. "We don't know where we'll be safe and where we won't, and I'm not willing to trust a museum or library on faith."

"Sticky's plan for warm food worked," Reynie said reasonably. "An entire meal that we didn't have to pay for." He felt a bit guilty about that, but survival was survival, and he could apologize later. "Maybe this will work too."

Kate set her jaw and tried not to glare at him. She really was against it, but Reynie didn't know if it was because she really thought it was in their best interest to stay where they were or if it was her inborn instinct for strength. Honestly,he thought, it sounded like she was only trying to prove herself. He couldn't believe that! ...Well, he could, actually, but that she would choose to freeze to death when Sticky knew how they could get shelter? It was risky, that much was true, but not as risky as staying out in the open.

"Fine," the girl said at last. "We'll try it. But at the first sign of trouble—"

"Ahem," Sticky said, crossing his arms and looking rather pleased with himself.

Kate scowled, and amended, "Fine. At the first sign of _imminent danger _we're getting out of there, no questions asked. Agreed?"

There was consent all around, and Constance celebrated by stealing what was left of Kate's toast.

::::::::

**"Y**ou picked _this _one?" Kate exclaimed, looking up at the large building with incredulity. "The Stonetown Museum of Science and Local History?"

"Have you ever been here?" Sticky retorted.

"Don't you have to pay to get in?"

"You do," said Sticky, "but if we say we're here on school business – it's not too late in the year and some schools assign huge projects over the break – we should be able to get a discount, mostly because we're all under the age for it. We just need cash."

Kate and Reynie had walked up to the doors, looking to see just how much they would need. Kate wasn't happy with the outcome. "Rhonda hasn't got enough cash in her purse," she said. "We'd have to use a check or credit card."

"What about an ATM?" Constance said, and coughed.

Sticky seemed astounded at Constance having taken his side, but didn't deny the advantage. "Yes, there's one around the corner," he said. Kate began walking off in the direction Sticky indicated. The other three followed her, their feet crunching through the excess snow that hadn't been plowed yet.

It was an altogether depressing day, really. The sky was just as overcast as the day before, only darker, like there was another storm on the way. Another reason they should be inside. A wind was blowing the darker clouds into the city; it was strong and bitter, and it wasn't pleasant to be standing out in. Rather, it was brutal. Kate didn't seem to notice, though, even though her hands were pale and she'd shoved them into her pockets with no avail. Her bucket clattered along, and Reynie was certain that it felt akin to an icebox inside.

As they turned the corner to the ATM, they were swallowed up in a minor crowd that was coming to the museum for either pleasure or business. The ATM had a line, but when Kate unstrapped her bucket, pulled her hair out, and donned Sticky's glasses, she looked unlike herself enough to pass through the crowd unnoticed, something that would be hard for the original Kate Wetherall to do.

"Why did you pick this one specifically?" Reynie asked Sticky as they waited for Kate's return. Constance was lying down atop the bench-like wall surrounding the museum grounds.

Sticky was huddling on the wall and shivering. "It's the last one someone would think to look in," he said. "Most kids flock there. It's a huge crowd, and admission is expensive. There's actually a lot of security during the day."

Reynie was incredulous. He'd been to museums before, of course, but not this one and not for a long time. "Sticky!" he exclaimed. "Isn't the point _not _to be seen?"

"Of course," Sticky replied indignantly. "That's why I picked here. In the crowd no one will notice us, but the Ten Men might not know that. I'm hoping they'll think we think being unseen is remaining out of the crowd and going somewhere people can't see us. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?"

"So you're betting our safety on a misconception?"

"Not a misconception, just a matter of opinion, really: what do they think we think? They know that we're smart, but _how_ smart? Psychology, I suppose."

Constance wasn't speaking except to moan in discomfort every so often. Reynie was concerned for her, but there wasn't much he could do at the moment. She hadn't exhibited any symptoms of anything specifically yet, and until she did he had no idea how to help her. He hated being so useless, but this premise was Sticky's area of expertise.

Speaking of Sticky's expertise, Kate was walking back now, huddled inward against the fierce wind. She pulled off the spectacles and gave them back to Sticky, then grabbed her bucket from Reynie and quickly strapped it back on.

"Okay, let's get back to that museum of yours and go inside, pronto," she said. "We need warmth before – _get down!_"

Her outburst scared the wits out of all three of the others, and they immediately fell on their stomachs as though gunshots were being fired over their heads. Looking up fearfully, Reynie saw the back of a suited man wearing a flapping trench coat and a hat. Judging by what he could see of the hairstyle, it was Sharpe. They needn't have hidden; the Ten Man was walking into the museum. All the same, he was very glad Kate had noticed.

"Alright," Reynie said, standing up. "That was too close. C'mon, this was a bad idea." With that, he dragged Sticky away from the museum, leaving the others wondering if he'd meant a bad idea on his own part or Sticky's. Kate gave his back a perplexed and sad look, before picking Constance up gently and following him.

::::::::

**I**t was almost surreally quiet and still in the small clothing store after the raucous hustle and bustle of the windy streets. The four of them walked over to the winter section and browsed. They couldn't care less what the clothes looked like, they just wanted the warmest possible things that would fit them. Ten minutes later, each of them was carrying a bundle of warm clothes. "Now," said Kate, "We need to decide on where to sleep."

They chose the most secluded little back alley they could find. There was nobody else there to disturb them, and actually, if they used their new coats as blankets, it might make quite a cozy spot to sleep at the end, where a solitary street lamp was casting a circle of light. "It's getting late," said Sticky, noticing that the lamp was on. "Let's set up camp."

"Are you sure we should be _here_?" said Kate skeptically. "With no one else around? I mean, if the Ten Men find us alone..."

"If the Ten Men find us, we're done for no matter what," said Reynie bleakly. Constance looked up at him fearfully. "At least we've got privacy here."

With their makeshift sleeping bags and in relative warmth, the Mysterious Benedict Society spent an almost enjoyable evening sitting in a circle and talking about lighter things, such as the holiday decorations around Stonetown. Finally, when the cloud cover cleared without precipitation and the dark-blue sky was revealed, Kate's smile disappeared, replaced by a grim businesslike expression. "We really ought to get to sleep now," she said. "After what happened at the museum, we should have a lookout. I'll take first watch." She walked over to sit just outside of the circle of light and peered intently into the blackness.

In the meantime, the boys and Constance were trying to get comfortable using their new clothes. Constance was wearing her rainjacket, while lying on a thick coat and using a sweatshirt purchased by Kate as a blanket. Sticky wrapped himself in three coats. Reynie snuggled into a zipped jacket, as if it were a sleeping bag. It actually wasn't terrible; it had stopped snowing, and…how extraordinary! There were even two stars out in the sky. Usually no stars were visible because of all the city lights.

_Sleeping under the stars,_ he thought with a smile.

::::::::

**W**hen he awoke, it was bright and late. He had slept in. Sitting up, he found that he was not the only one – Constance was snoring beside him. He was a little concerned at the sight of her: there were dark circles under her eyes, and her face was the color of ice. _She's only four_, Reynie thought. _Too young to be out here so long_.

He also saw that the other two were already up. Kate was sitting a few feet away, hugging her knees – Sticky was nowhere to be seen. "Where's Sticky?" he asked her.

She turned around, and the sight of her face startled Reynie. Her eyes were bloodshot and darker than Constance's, though her complexion was normal. "Oh! You're awake," she said.

Reynie shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. Did I keep everyone waiting?"

Kate shook her head. "Oh, no. You had every right to be exhausted, none of us have slept since the night before the attack."

Again, Reynie felt sheepish and kind of ashamed. _He _had actually slept some the night _of _the attack.

"Anyway, Sticky went off to get breakfast," she went on.

"To..._get _breakfast?"

"Yeah, we didn't want to wake you and Constance." When she said her name, Kate looked at the small toddler, asleep at the foot of the streetlamp. "I'm worried about her," she said to him. "I think she might be getting the flu…."

"I hope not," said Reynie. If Constance had influenza, that meant a huge problem—if they didn't find a way to treat her, she might die.

Speaking of which… "Kate," Reynie began, "Did you stay up _all _night?"

Kate nodded.

Reynie was mortified. "But why didn't you wake up one of us?" he demanded.

Kate gave him a look. "Honestly, Reynie, think about it. Would _you _have woken _me _up if I was finally getting a chance to sleep after forty-eight hours?"

Reynie didn't have to think about it. "No."

"Well, all right then. I was the one who needed sleep least."

Reynie felt another pang of guilt. "Fair enough," he said. "But we're taking it in real shifts tonight."

That was when Sticky returned. He was carrying three steaming bundles wrapped in napkins. "Hi," he said, grinning at Reynie.

"Hey. What are those?"

Sticky grimaced. "'Breakfast burritos,'" he replied. "Perhaps not very healthy, but they're supposed to be filling. I was only able to get three," he added apologetically.

"How _did _you get them?" asked Kate. "I've got the purse here."

Sticky smiled in a sheepish, almost impish way.

Kate grinned. "You didn't."

"I did," he said.

Reynie didn't see what was good about this. Stealing wasn't something they ought to make a habit out of. He let this one slide, however, even though it was utterly avoidable, probably because he was famished. They split the first two burritos as best they could between the three of them, and left the third for Constance. Most likely she wouldn't eat it all, but it didn't seem right to leave a sick four-year-old half a burrito for her breakfast.

When Constance finally woke up, she blinked at them a little, sat up and said, "Is that for me?" without so much as a "good morning". Her voice sounded extremely congested.

Reynie was proven wrong; Constance ate every last bite. The others' stomachs grumbled loudly. She was less than half of their size, and yet she had gotten more than any of them. An unwanted and ugly feeling that had been festering in them now directed itself at Constance: resentment.

::::::::

**T**he next two days were spent rather idly. The clouds had gathered again, hanging over the city, a promise of foul weather. They got another newspaper, but found nothing worth noting in it. Sure, there were some interesting articles, but nothing _important._ An oil spill here, a racist policeman there, a miracle surgery here, a bungee-jumping fourteen-year-old there. They had four more cheap meals (two per day), bought with a few dollars from the ATM. They wanted to use the credit card sparingly.

Despite their fevered efforts, they found no reason to believe that their missing guardians were on the same planet, let alone in the same city. One time, Reynie found Constance grumbling rhyming phrases to herself about "missing in action" and "angry transaction." For his own part, Reynie had begun to retreat more and more into his own thoughts, which were increasingly bitter.

In the beginning, they'd thought they would sleuth around the city for a day or two, solving puzzles and finding clues and putting professional invesigators to shame. The finding of the first newspaper renewed this idea. They were the Mysterious Benedict Society; obviously, they could easily find what police and federal agents could not, even hidden and hunted, on the street, without resources. What a fantasy! Reynie was beginning to see what children they really were.

His stony silence was beginning to affect the others. Kate continued to smile and say cheerful words, but her happiness was artificial; her eyes showed how worn and frustrated she was. Sticky was polishing his spectacles so much that the lenses were always smeared.

Sticky, of course, had more to concern himself with than the matter of his vanished parents. Now that the four of them had to take care of themselves, it was he – who had the most experience living on the streets – they depended on to provide the majority of food and good shelter. Not to mention that the Society often found themselves consulting Sticky's advice as they tried fruitlessly to come up with a plan of action.

Kate, meanwhile, was the most tired of them all, and yet also the most alert at the same time. She glared suspiciously at every passing businessman, with her hand on her bucket ready for a fight. Her home and family had been taken away from her once again by Mr. Curtain and his cronies, and she was itching to make them feel a little of her pain. She was mainly responsible for keeping them hidden and protected – she was like their bodyguard.

With Sticky leading and Kate wrangling, Reynie felt more useless and ashamed than ever. He had had more sleep than any of them, but he had slept the latest (not counting Constance, who was sick and four years old). His talents were of no value in a scenario like this. All the riddle-solving in the world could not paint the road to the missing adults, or make platters of food appear in front of the children. He had never felt this useless. He had never felt such bitter, almost jealous admiration of his friends.

To be frank, he felt like a wimp compared to them.

::::::::

**T**he third night was the worst. The camping-esque feel had evaporated, replaced by a powerful longing in all of them to be sleeping under a roof, in their warm beds. Sticky had insisted on taking the first shift, though Reynie had a feeling that Kate was keeping an eye open anyway.

They were sleeping in the same place, the secluded alley with no light except for a lonely streetlight at the end, which they slept under. The lookout would sit at the edge of the light cast by this lamp and peer into the unlit darkness that swallowed the way down the alley, into the part of the city that was _alive. _Alive with lights and people, it could be seen at the end of the narrow lane, separated from them by the night. They had no wish to stay there, however, since it was no warmer there and they were much less likely to attract unwanted attention where they were right now.

Reynie had sickened dreams that night. He lay awake for a couple of hours, tossing and turning with a crick in his neck and an ache in his back – _I deserve it, _he thought mercilessly – before falling into an uneasy sleep. He did not remember these dreams upon awakening, which interrupted sleep often that night. After waking up yet again, this time from a dream in which he could just see Miss Perumal at the end of a long hallway, but could not get to her, he saw Kate stand up and walk over to Sticky, whose head was drooping.

She murmured something to him, and he trudged over to lie down next to Reynie. Within a minute, he was snoring. In the meantime, Kate assumed the position of lookout. That wouldn't do.

Reynie decided that there was no point in trying to sleep. So, with his bones protesting eloquently, he stood up and walked over to sit next to Kate. She did not look at him or speak to him.

"Hey," he said in a low voice. "You really need sleep. Go on, I'll keep watch."

Kate hesitated, but finally said, "No thanks, I'm fine. Really. You go back to bed."

Reynie put an arm around her. "You know," he said, "even the Great Kate Weather Machine needs rest."

She looked at him.

"You'll be no use to us tomorrow if you're dead on your feet. How would you like to fight a Ten Man like _that?_"

Kate didn't answer right away. At last she said, "You're sure you'll be okay?"

He nodded. "Go get some sleep."

So she stood up and walked back to lie down under the lamp. Reynie watched her for a while, hugging himself, and then turned back to stare down the dark, cold street.

**::::::::**

_Kahlan: By the way, the hotel thing was my {GKZM: brilliant} idea._

_Zonkey: In the spirit of MBS, we're going to play a game of riddles. Starting now and continuing to the end of Nomansland, every chapter will end with a clue that reveals the title of the upcoming chapter. These riddles will increase in difficulty as chapter numbers go up. That is, the clue for the upcoming chapter will be the easiest and the one for the final chapter will be the hardest. So here's your first and easiest clue!_

3PIH O+ 3J3HMON


	6. 5: Nowhere to Hide

A/N (s):

_GreatKateZonkeyMachine – YES, my darlings! Here is your present! I've been preparing this all month. Since it's probably been a while since you read this story, you might consider re-reading the previous chapters; in addition to finishing up this chapter, I also made some changes, both major and minor, to improve the already-published chapters._

_Now for the bad news. I realize that Kahlan Aisling hasn't been completely inactive, but she has not answered any of my PMs for a long time. At some point, I had to move on without her. It remains to be seen whether she will reappear, but for now Nomansland is down to one lonely author._

_**-N-O-M-A-N-S-L-A-N-D-**_

_**CHAPTER – 5**_

"Nowhere to Hide"  
_or, Unexpected Complications_

**::::::::**

"_Now, what's this all about?" said Miss Perumal. "And will it take long? Mother's not feeling well."_

"_I assure you," said Mr. Benedict, "This will be short. And I'm confident you'll want to see what I have to show you."_

"_Where _are _we, exactly?" asked Mrs. Washington. "I've never seen this part of town."_

"_Well, you wouldn't have," Mr. Benedict replied. "It's not exactly a part of Stonetown; it's just off the riverbank. I'm afraid I can't give you an exact location because it would be dangerous for _anyone _to know that."_

"_You're winding us up," said Mr. Washington._

"_I'm afraid he isn't," said Milligan. "_We _don't even completely know what this means."_

"_Well, please," said Miss Perumal's mother. "Show us instead of dropping hints."_

"_All will be made clear soon," said Mr. Benedict patiently. "But first, there is a precautionary procedure we must go through."_

"_How long will it take?" asked Miss Perumal._

_Mr. Benedict smiled. "No time at all, if you're willing. How many of you have at least one cell phone or handheld radio, or any device that receives and puts out wave transmissions?"_

_The four parents blinked, and then they all – except for Miss Perumal's mother – raised their hands._

_Mr. Benedict smiled again. "All right, well, before we can continue you'll have to set them here," he put his hand on a small round table, "and leave them here until we've finished."_

_They all hesitated. "It's just…" said Mrs. Washington, who was in a wheelchair because of arthritic legs, "Well, you see, Mr. Benedict, my phone is for emergencies; for instance, if my chair tips over—"_

"_I assure you, Mrs. Washington, that you will be quite safe with us. We'll be back out in only a few minutes and you can retrieve your phone."_

"_Well…alright."_

_The three of them laid three cell phones and two pagers on the table._

"_All right, we've done what you asked, Mr. Benedict. Now please, tell us what you're talking about."_

"_First, you'll also need to turn all of those items completely off. Take out the batteries if you must."_

"_But why?"_

"_The bunker we're in is equipped with cutting-edge security, and if one of your phones goes off, it will go into lockdown."_

_Slightly alarmed, Miss Perumal and Mr. Washington stepped forward and turned off their phones and the two pagers._

_Milligan walked over to the wall opposite the slanting tunnel, and typed a long code into a numeric keypad._

_The windowless steel door slid sideways into the wall._

"_This room is extremely secure," Mr. Benedict explained. "It would be nearly impossible to get through the wall or door without the password. Follow me, please."_

_Mr. Benedict, Milligan, Rhonda, Number Two, the Washingtons and the Perumals all filed through the door. They were in a plain concrete room with no windows and thick walls and ceiling and a steel-plated floor. The only light was a small dim lamp hanging from the ceiling._

_Mrs. Perumal gasped. Directly across from them, bolted to the floor, was a stout metal chair with two helmets on it: one red, and one blue._

Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Reynie? Wake up."

But he didn't want to wake up. He was cold, cold down into his bones, and it hurt to move. His frost-soaked sweater held him down and his frozen limbs encouraged him to be still. He tried to brush away the hand, but it just shook more vigorously. "Reynie."

Reynie moaned groggily. "Wha…Oh!" He sat bolt upright. He had fallen asleep _on guard duty_.

Five days had passed since Mr. Benedict's house had been destroyed. They'd found nothing. Reynie had volunteered again to keep watch the previous night; he must have dozed off as he sat there. Expecting a reprimand from Kate, Reynie braced himself and looked at the person who had awakened him.

It was not Kate, but Sticky. He smiled and said, "Shh. I won't tell Kate."

Reynie breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you." Reynie looked around. There was watery white powder all over everything. "Oh, no… It _snowed_ overnight?"

Sticky nodded. "I woke up because it was so cold."

Reynie kicked the ground. "Great. Just peachy, exactly what Constance needs."

"What we _all _need," said Sticky grimly.

They were silent for a minute. Then Reynie said, "What we _really_ need is some food."

"I was just about to go get breakfast," replied Sticky. "Want to come with me?"

"Sure."

They stood up and walked down the alley. Inside a minute, they were turning onto one of the bustling downtown streets. Traffic was hopelessly jammed – people were walking across the street by weaving between the stationary cars – and the sidewalks were packed with shoppers. The streetlamps sported generic figures of candles and toy soldiers and the likes, made of what was meant to evoke the idea of tinsel but looked to Reynie like gigantic shiny pipecleaners. They passed a young man singing some cheerful holiday song the name of which Reynie couldn't rememberand playing along with a guitar; his case lay open on the ground with a few one-dollar bills lying in it. Several shops they passed by had identical signs in their windows: LAST MINUTE SALE, EVERYTHING INSIDE 25% OFF!

'Last minute?' Reynie looked at his watch. The date was December 17. He frowned. What was he supposed to remember about today…? It had seemed so important.

Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks. Sticky stopped too. "What is it?"

"I've just remembered…"

"Yes?" said Sticky eagerly.

"It's…it's Constance's birthday."

Sticky deflated. He felt disappointed, and more than a little irritated. "So what?"

Reynie looked at him. "Well, you know… We were going to have a party, and a cake, and everything! And we'd already picked out her presents. They probably got burned up in the fire…." He trailed off. "Well it…it doesn't matter now, I suppose. Let's not mention it to the girls."

They kept walking.

"So where are we going?" said Reynie.

Sticky sighed. "I guess McDonald's," he said in resignation. "It's the only place nearby."

Reynie raised his eyebrows. "I thought—"

"I know, I know. It won't keep us very full for very long, but it's food. We've got the credit card." He held it up.

"Why do you think they never stop us when we use that, anyway?" said Reynie.

"They probably think we're tourists. I remember a long time ago, my parents took me to Washington, D.C. They let me walk around on my own a bit, and they gave me their credit card to buy souvenirs. The cashiers didn't say anything."

"Was that before or after the quiz competitions?"

Sticky's face darkened. "Before. Why?"

Reynie shrugged. "No reason."

They walked on in silence. Sticky was wondering what was wrong with Reynie – why had he asked that? He knew Sticky was touchy about those years. Reynie, meanwhile, was silently pondering Sticky's reaction. Talk about oversensitive, he thought irritably.

The cashier at the fast-food restaurant was in a mood to rival both of theirs. She had been unable to sleep, burned her morning toast, hadn't had time to make her hair presentable, and had arrived late to work. Subsequently she had been assigned her least favorite task: working the inside counter. When the two thirteen-year-old boys walked up to her, she was not feeling very disposed to be tolerant.

Thus, after they had ordered their food – at least twice the amount the cashier had expected, for such skinny boys – when her machine rejected their credit card, a spike of anger went through her.

"Try it again," she said impatiently.

Sticky swiped the card a second time. Yet again, the machine would not accept it. She snatched the card and scrutinized it. Then she squinted at her machine and tapped it. She swiped the card herself, and her expression darkened.

Reynie and Sticky looked at each other anxiously.

She turned back to them and handed them the card. "It appears that this card is not valid," she said robotically, as though reading from a piece of paper. "Please use another medium of payment."

"Another…? But—"

"Look, kid, you shouldn't be using a credit card in the first place, but this one's expired. You'll have to pay with cash."

"But…we don't _have_ any cash," said Reynie, his voice quavering slightly.

"Then you'll have to give me that back," she said indifferently. She picked up the tray of food and started towards the back.

"Wait!" Sticky cried.

She turned. "What?"

"Uh…" The boys looked at each other. There was nothing they could do. "Never mind."

The cashier snorted. "Sorry for your inconvenience," she said sarcastically.

The two boys strode quickly to the door and out into the freezing air. "This is not good," said Reynie. "We've only got so much money in Rhonda's purse, and that'll run out fast. We're going to have to find another way to feed ourselves."

Sticky nodded. "I'll think of something," he said, not feeling as sure as he sounded (and not sounding as sure as he thought he sounded).

The girls did not take the news well. "Great," said Constance. "Now what will we do?"

"We're healthy enough," said Kate. "We don't need to eat just yet."

"We can't keep on going like this," said Reynie. "We've got to do something."

"In case you haven't noticed," said Kate testily, "we're trying our best here. I don't see you pulling any weight."

Reynie stared at her.

"I'm sorry," Kate murmured. "I don't know why I said that…."

"Because it's true," said Reynie. "You and Sticky are actually helping. I can't even take care of Constance."

As if on cue, Constance sneezed loudly.

"No, it's not true," Kate protested. "You're always leading us, you keep us together when—"

"No, I don't," said Reynie. "You do. You hold us together and Sticky leads us. I'm just a burden."

Kate was shaking her head. "You—"

"Let's talk about something else," said Sticky uncomfortably. "Reynie's right. Living on the curb forever won't get us anywhere. We've got to find out where our folks are, and what Curtain's planning."

They were silent for a moment. The first to speak was Kate. "I'm sure they left of their own volition," she said. "All the rooms in the house were neat—except Constance's, of course—and I never heard any sounds of a struggle. For some reason, they all went on a secret errand while we were asleep."

"And never came back?" said Constance in a small voice.

"They might have come back already," Reynie offered up. "We just don't know where to meet them."

"What about Curtain?" said Sticky. "We hadn't heard anything about him for months until this happened."

"I don't know what his plans are, but it scares me to think about," said Kate seriously. The others felt their extremities grow colder; if it frightened Kate, they should all be afraid. "Whatever he's doing, it's big. Attacking our house was bold, and I know the Ten Men haven't always been so active in the city."

"And they left the house empty-handed..." added Reynie. "That's the strangest part; they didn't even take the Whisperer. Does Mr. Curtain not _want_ it anymore for some reason? Did they leave it to be burned?"

"If he doesn't want it, what was the point of attacking at all?" said Kate. "Just to capture _us_?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But there'd be no reason to go after us if he didn't want the Whisperer. Maybe..."

"What?"

"Maybe it wasn't even in the house."

"How could it not be—?"

"I don't know," he said again. "But something definitely caught the Ten Men by surprise." He remembered the angry shouts of the men as they ransacked the house. "They wanted the Whisperer, but when they didn't find it they tried to get _us_ instead, as bargaining chips."

"Well, whatever the reason is, Curtain doesn't have the Whisperer—and that can only be a good thing," said Kate.

"But the Whisperer _was_ there," said Constance. "We saw it that morning, remember?"

"I don't think so," said Reynie. "All I saw was Mr. Benedict going down to the basement."

"No," said Constance, her brow furrowing. "I'm sure we saw it. Didn't we? Sticky," she said imploringly, "surely you remember. Tell them."

"Constance," said Reynie, "Sticky wasn't there. It was just you and me."

"Oh…." Constance seemed very confused, but a hacking cough seized her and she soon forgot about it.

Reynie rubbed his chin. "Mr. Benedict did make it sound like the Whisperer was there, in the basement…but I suppose that isn't a guarantee that it was."

"But why would he lie to us?" said Constance indignantly, having stopped coughing now.

"Maybe for the same reason he didn't tell us where they were all going," said Kate. "In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the two things were related."

"Hey, yeah!" said Sticky eagerly. "Maybe they were taking the Whisperer to a new, secret location – one with better security!"

"And it turns out that was a good move," said Constance. "Since they attacked the house the same night."

But Reynie was shaking his head. "It's too much of a coincidence. Somehow the Ten Men knew Mr. Benedict and the others would be leaving the house unguarded that night, or Mr. Benedict knew that his brother would try and steal the Whisperer."

"But if he knew, why wouldn't he tell us?" said Constance.

Nobody had an answer for this.

Some time later, a police man came down the alleyway towards them. Reynie and Sticky looked at one another nervously, thinking of the cancelled credit card. "Er…" they said.

"Hey, you kids!" the officer shouted. "You aren't supposed to be here. It's called loitering," he said, as if he thought they didn't know the word.

Kate decided it was best to play dumb. "Littering?" she replied, feigning puzzlement.

"No, _loitering_. L-O-I-T-E-R. It means you're hanging around in a place where you're not allowed."

"Oooohh," she said drastically. "Sorry, we'll get out of here right away."

As they walked away, the police officer watched them but did not call to them again. So a missing persons case had not been filed. Perhaps they thought everybody had burned to a crisp in the fire, or perhaps the government still wanted them kept secret.

As soon as they turned around the bend, all their falsely calm faces dissolved to be replaced by panic. "Where will we stay now?" "What's going to happen to us?" "Oh, great, _now_ what do we do?"

"Hey, guys – qui – QUIET!" yelled Kate over the rest of them. "Calm down! Remember what we were doing – the grownups didn't just vanish from the face of the Earth. They have to be somewhere." She squinted at their surroundings as if she might spot them if she looked hard enough. "Let's think. Where do we think they might be? What places do we know that they would think of?"

"Our old house in the suburbs," said Reynie at once. "We never finished moving all our stuff, because we'd always thought we'd move back in at some point."

"Okay, do you know where it is?" said Kate.

"124 on Locust Street."

"That's not far; let's go."

It was with a determination that had not been present in them for some time that the Mysterious Benedict Society set off at a trot towards their only chance at a clue.

::::::::

The house on Locust Street had been empty for a while now, though no one in the neighborhood had yet noticed. People had better things to do with their time than ponder the strange comings and goings—or lack thereof—of an insignificant little house among the many others. Nobody noticed when the family who lived there suddenly disappeared. Nobody noticed that the mail stopped coming. Nobody noticed that the trash cans in the backyard were beginning to smell like toxic waste. Nobody noticed when the men in black suits came. And nobody noticed when four children broke into the house.

Reynie, Sticky, Kate and Constance made absolutely sure that the coast was clear before they emerged. The street was tight and claustrophobic, houses with smallish yards lining both sides, sloping steeply down on one side, and trees all around. The frosty grass shone under the black sky.

They walked down the downward-sloping driveway, devoid of any vehicles, and onto the front porch.

"We always kept the house key here," said Reynie, picking up a small porch decoration and reaching under it.

"Uh, Reynie?" said Sticky. "The door's already unlocked."

Reynie froze. He set down the bauble and turned the doorknob. It swung creakily forward.

"Well, _that's_ not a good sign," said Kate.

They crept inside. Kate flipped the light switch but nothing happened. Reynie strode to the kitchen and turned the faucet knobs. Again, nothing.

"No electricity, no water," said Reynie. Constance coughed in her sleep, slung over Kate's back.

Kate set her gently down on the porch. "I think you guys had better wait out here while I check and make sure that the coast is clear," she said warily, walking into the dark house with her hand on the flip-top of her bucket. Reynie and Sticky stepped back onto the porch, hands on Constance, ready to run.

After three agonizing minutes, Kate signaled that it was safe to come inside, her face a little more at ease.

"There's nobody still here, unless they're hiding in the pipes," Kate reported. "But they definitely _were_ here. Every inch of the place has been searched."

She was right. Empty drawers were littered all over the floor. The television was laying face-down on the floor, its screen shattered. Its plug had yanked the outlet out of the wall. The doors of the entertainment center from which the TV had fallen had been ripped askew by the hinges. Despite all the wreckage inside, however, the windows and blinds had not been touched. It appeared that the Ten Men did not want to alert any outsiders to their activities; without entering, it would have been impossible to see that the house had been broken into and ransacked.

"Well, this is no better than outside," said Constance drearily.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know the power would be cut off so soon," said Reynie, mentally kicking himself. "Hey!" he then said, his face brightening. "We still have some blankets in a back room. They might be cold, but they'll warm up after we've been using them a while." He left to retrieve the blankets.

Sticky said to Kate, "Well, it's not much of a shelter, but at least it'll keep us hidden for now."

She nodded. "I'm not complaining," she said.

"But the Ten Men _know_ about this place!" said Constance shrilly. "They've searched it!"

"Exactly," Kate said calmly. "They've been here, and they think we're nowhere near here. It's always good to hide in a place the seeker has already checked."

Reynie presently returned, carrying a bundle of blankets that hid his face. He was right; they were freezing cold. But, they were better than nothing. Soon Constance, Sticky and Reynie were all fast asleep, and Kate was keeping watch from the driveway.

Reynie had an extremely strange dream that night. He was running alone over a stark, flat landscape with a dark sky and thick fog hanging in the air. Familiar faces—such as those of Mr. Benedict and Miss Perumal—loomed in the fog and then faded again. He was becoming exhausted, too weak to keep going. Then three figures solidified out of the mist. As they peered down at them wearily, he saw that they were his friends, Constance, Sticky and Kate. But they were taller, much taller than Reynie remembered them.

"Come on," said Kate sadly, tugging on his arm. He would have gladly let her carry him the whole way, but he could not be lifted. Looking down, he saw that a huge, heavy stone block had appeared, and his feet were chained to it.

"Come on!" said his friends, crying out in unison and pulling together, but the block wouldn't budge. "We have to go!"

"I'm sorry!" Reynie replied anguishedly. "I'm trying! I don't mean to hold you back."

Suddenly, all his friends let go and looked at him with accusing sadness in their eyes. They seemed to be getting even taller…. But then Reynie realized that they were not growing, but he was shrinking—or rather, sinking. The stone block had fallen right through the ground as if it had liquefied, and it was dragging Reynie down with it. He told his friends to flee and save themselves, but they didn't move.

"We cannot go without you," they said together.

Something else was approaching, becoming clearer and clearer as it moved through the fog towards them. Reynie didn't want to see what it was; he was afraid of it. "Run! RUN!" he cried, but his friends only looked at him sadly.

The thing—the person—was now close enough for Reynie to recognize it. It was the leering, triumphant face of McCracken. As Reynie watched in terror, the Ten Man opened his mouth and laughed. He laughed and laughed, sounding much more evil and insane than he remembered. The sound of the laughter ricocheted throughout the endless place, never fading, just adding to itself. He covered his ears, but the noise only got louder.

The sky turned orange, black on the horizon. The ground heated and cracked. Suddenly, as if springing from the Ten Man's wicked mirth, flames leapt out of nothing, and they were everywhere, consuming everything, and his friends were dying, burning, but it was not normal burning—it was like they were made of paper—and McCracken was laughing, laughing, laughing, and he looked straight at Reynie, and the fire was not just all around, it was in McCracken's _eyes_, and the horrible flames took up the whole of Reynie's vision, and then he was completely pulled under the surface of the ground, and everything went black….

Reynie opened his eyes, and the blackness disappeared, replaced by the blue gloom of the unlit house. He sat up, and found that he was sweating profusely despite the cold. He threw the blanket off of himself and walked through the doorway. Kate was nodding off. He put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Go on, get some sleep. I'll relieve you."

Kate did not object this time; she rose and walked inside. Reynie began to pace up and down the steep driveway, so as to avoid falling asleep again himself. The air was not as icy tonight as it had been lately. He trudged up and down, up and down, and found his mind wandering. How much did Mr. Curtain know? How much did he have? And where on earth were Reynie's guardians?

He was jerked out of his thoughts by the sight of something moving in his peripheral vision: a man, strolling down the sidewalk…and carrying a briefcase.

His heart suddenly beating much faster, Reynie squinted at the figure, to see if it was any Ten Man he knew. But before he had identified the man, the man identified him.

The man stopped dead. So did Reynie. Then the Ten Man smiled broadly and strode, quickly and purposefully, straight at him. He backed away, and then he turned tail and ran down the driveway. But it sloped more then he realized. He was not able to stop fast enough when he reached the bottom, and in trying he flew off his feet and landed in the garage, his forehead striking the concrete; there was a loud crack as his vision flashed white, as if lightning had struck. He heard a startled shriek from somewhere inside the house.

Reynie just lied there, dazed, watching stars dance around in his eyes. Vaguely, he could hear the Ten Man's feet some way behind him; and then the door in the garage flew open and Kate saw what was happening. She hoisted him up and dragged him inside.

"Come _on_," she grunted. "We have to go."

Those words sounded terribly familiar; remembering the dream, Reynie's eyes flew open and he saw Kate swinging Constance onto her back, having just woken Sticky.

"Lock the door," she instructed Reynie. "It won't keep them out for long, but it might give us enough time to escape through the back."

The backyard was full of old trashcans that had obviously been there so long their contents were now positively dangerous; Reynie would only have been slightly surprised to see mutant insects and rodents crawling away from the foul things.

The children could hear shouts from around the front of the house. The Ten Men were about to reach the door.

"Run on ahead behind these garbage bags, into the woods," Kate said, transferring Constance to Sticky; there was a steeply sloping glade full of prickly underbrush beyond the back yard.

A wide stream of blood was trickling down Reynie's face. "What're you—?" he began, but Kate cut him off.

"Just _go_—trust me, I'll catch up!"

Reynie caught a glimpse of Kate pulling out her Swiss army knife and her spool of fishing twine before he and Sticky scrambled into the wood.

At the same time, the Ten Men were coming around back, knowing that the children would try to escape that way. They burst around the corner of the house, briefcases at the ready, to find the backyard empty. Assuming that the children had run into the glade, the Ten Men struggled through the underbrush—and Crawlings tripped over a nearly invisible line of clear fishing twine, strung between the trees. The line snapped.

A torrent of rotten garbage fell from the trees as suspended trash cans dumped over their heads, burying the Ten Men in month-old rubbish.

Kate listened to make sure her booby-trap had worked, heard the furious curses of the Ten Men with deep satisfaction, and ran to catch up with her friends.

::::::::

"After my parents found out I was living in Stonetown," said Sticky, "they bought a house in the city so we could stay close to you guys and Mr. Benedict. I bet it still has power, too, because we didn't stop paying the bill when we moved into the maze."

"I thought your parents were already in serious debt when they found you," said Constance rudely. "How could they afford to buy a house?"

"Well, it was a very cheap house," Sticky replied, half-smiling. "The one no one else would buy."

"Why was it so cheap?" said Kate.

"Because of the location. It's pretty removed from everything; no neighbors, no bus stop—we had to drive half an hour to get to the grocery store."

"But if it has no neighbors..." said Reynie, "that means there won't be any witnesses if it turns out the Ten Men are waiting."

Kate looked thoughtful. "Maybe... What's the land like, Sticky?"

"It's bare and relatively flat. That was one good thing: we had an enormous yard."

"Then there's no cover for the Ten Men to hide behind if they're going to ambush us. We'll see them coming a mile away."

"And they'll see _us_ coming a mile away," added Reynie.

"I think I've got sharper eyesight than any Ten Man," she replied.

Reynie was about to protest, but then Constance gave a horrible, shuddering cough, spraying the icy ground. He exchanged a frightened glance with Sticky, and knew they were thinking the same thing: if they didn't warm shelter very soon, there was a serious chance the small girl was going to die.

"Alright," he said finally. "But let's rest here for an hour or two first."

They were huddled under a concrete bridge that crossed the river. The previous day was a blur; they'd run away from the Perumals' house and wandered through town paralyzed by fear, and rested under this bridge when night fell. Now it was daytime again. Across the water, under the bridge on the other side, was a rough-looking man with an unkempt gray beard wearing a lot of overclothing, whom they uncomfortably avoided looking at. A large, solitary bird circled overhead—unusual for this time of year, but it was too high to see clearly.

Reynie groaned and leaned back against a grimy support column. His head was throbbing. They'd determined that the fall had cracked his skull. "Are you sure there's nothing we can do for my head, Sticky?"

Sticky nodded regretfully. "It'll heal on its own—but there's no way to stop it from hurting, not without the right medicine. A doctor would tell you to avoid vigorous activity for a couple of weeks. No sports, no rough play—"

"No running for your life from Ten Men," said Kate, and they all laughed a little. It was enough to conjure fond memories of the four of them sharing the same kind of nervous laugh as they met in secret on the floor of his dormitory at the Institute, and of them sitting down to discuss their plan of action in the janitor's closet at the Monk Building, when Constance had been standing because she didn't want to touch the floor... He looked down at her, and the nostalgic smile he hadn't been able to keep away quickly faded; she was not standing now. She had none of the will or spunk she was supposed to have. She was just a barely-five-year-old girl, frightened and deathly ill.

He stood up, his face full of determination. They were going to go to Sticky's old house. They were going to live through this. Constance was going to have a sixth birthday.

"That's enough rest," he said. "My head will be fine."

"No, Reynie," said Kate, holding his hand. "You need—"

"I don't need anything. Constance needs warmth, shelter. Let's head for Sticky's place right now."

Sticky nodded and stood up too. "I think he's right. Here, I'll carry her—"

"No, I will," said Kate. "It makes much more sense for me to—"

"Kate, you _always_ have to carry her," said Sticky. "You carry her, you take the longest watches, you save us when we meet Ten Men—you're wearing yourself out. I insist."

They walked through town, keeping a wary eye out for suits and briefcases. Reynie was mostly silent, but Sticky and Kate took the opportunity to talk. It was good to talk; it gave them something to think about besides the cold and the long walk.

"It'll be good to see the place again," said Sticky, who had Constance in his arms (she was too sleepy and feeble to hold on to his back), with a kind of fondness. "I haven't been there since we moved in with Mr. Benedict."

"How long did you guys live there?" asked Kate.

"Only about a year. All the same, it was pretty important to me. It was my first real home since I ran away."

Kate smiled at Sticky's words, but Sticky himself suddenly began to look sad.

"Where do you think they are?" he asked.

Kate sighed. "I don't know. A lot of things don't add up. Whatever happened that night, it was a lot more than we could see."

Sticky nodded, and some desperate quality that had been in his expression for a few days now seemed to become more prevalent. He was a child—an exceptional child in every way, to be sure—but a child nonetheless, like all of them, longing for his parents.

Kate elbowed him reassuringly. "We're going to find them. Just you wait."

Meanwhile, Reynie was pondering their situation as they walked. He didn't know what to think about Sticky and Kate's discussion. He knew that staying in this house would be a very temporary fix; it wouldn't solve any of their real problems. The Ten Men would keep looking for them. The adults would still be missing. And their home would never cease to be gone. The only thing Sticky's house had to offer them was protection from the harsh winter and the terror of the past few days. But they had no leads... Their only purpose at the moment was reaching this house.

The scenery was becoming more and more like Sticky's description: Trees and houses were fewer and farther between. Visibility steadily lengthened as the land flattened out. Hardly a car traversed this road. Reynie thought this would make a good place for the Ten Men to ambush them, if there had been anywhere to ambush _from_.

Suddenly, he heard a terrible strangled cry ahead of him. He realized he had fallen behind the group. He galloped forward to see what the matter was.

It was Sticky who had screamed—and as Reynie caught up with him, he saw the reason quite clearly.

It was obvious that the Ten Men had been here before, just as they had been to Reynie's house. Reynie's house had been searched—but Sticky's house had been obliterated.

It had clearly happened a while back; there had been time enough for most of the small pieces of wreckage to be blown away. Everything that remained was so broken and blackened that it was barely recognizable as being part of a home. Heavy snowfall had covered much of the rubble, so that only a few large fragments stuck up out of the ground, affecting the appearance that this house had been ruined for years—virtually wiped out.

Sticky was standing where the edge of his house should have been. His expression was as bleak and dead as the sight before him.

"Sticky, I'm...I'm so sorry," Reynie said, unable to tear his eyes from the burnt remains of his friend's house.

Kate came to stand beside them, uncharacteristically inscrutable as she surveyed the wreckage. Slowly, she slid her hand into Sticky's.

A tear slid down Sticky's cheek. "They're evil," he said. It was barely louder than a whisper. Constance still in his arms, he knelt down and picked up a small handful of snow and ashes, rubbing it between his fingers.

"C'mon, Sticky," said Kate gently. "We need to move on before—"

"Give him a moment, for God's sake!" said Reynie.

Constance woke with a start. "Wassat?" she grumbled.

Kate gently removed her from Sticky's arms into her own. "I'm sorry, but we have to get back to the city. The sun's going down; it's going to get a lot colder soon."

"Can't you see he's—?"

"I know this must be traumatic for him, but life has to go on. We have to survive!"

"He just carried Constance for three hours in the freezing cold, only to find his destination—his home—burned to the ground!"

"It's going to take another three hours to get back to civilization! For God's sake, the temperature's dropping as we speak! If we fall apart now—"

"People should have a right to fall apart in times like this!"

There followed a ringing silence. Reynie realized that he might not have been defending Sticky so much as _himself_...

Sticky, who'd been silent through all this, finally said, "No, she's right. We have to go back. There's no use staying here."

"Hang on," said Reynie, trying to redeem himself. "We need to think about what our next move should be. I'm beginning to see a clear pattern: the Ten Men are eliminating every place that we might go. And the places they can't eliminate, they've got under surveillance. My house was searched. Your house was burned. And... Remember that newspaper article? There was a wildfire in the forest where Mr. Benedict and the others watched from their telescopes while we were at the Institute. I'm guessing it wasn't so _wild_ after all."

"So they're covering every place associated with us?" said Constance.

"Looks like it," Reynie replied.

"But those are the only places our parents might go to find us!" cried Sticky.

"I know. I've been wondering..." He turned to Kate. "When you and Milligan were living at the farm, he was still fighting Ten Men, right?"

She nodded.

"So why did they never try to attack the farm? I think it's because they never—"

"They never knew where we were living!" said Kate, brightening.

"So you think the Ten Men might not connect us to that farm?" said Sticky, and they both nodded excitedly.

"Hold on, let me get this straight," said Constance. "We've slept all over the place like hobos—we literally slept _under a bridge_—when we could have gone to this stupid farm the whole time?"

"If the Ten Men haven't found it, yes."

"Brilliant."

"But the farm is miles away!" said Kate. "It takes hours starting from Stonetown to _drive_ there."

That was true. Reynie rubbed his chin. "Do you still have Rhonda's purse, Kate?"

"Yes."

He grinned. "Then who says we can't drive?"

::::::::

"Taxi!"

It was now pouring rain; the downfall mixed with the already-fallen snow to create an unpleasant slush at the feet of everyone unfortunate enough to traverse the downtown sidewalks—including the three Society members running to catch up with Kate.

"But that's almost a six-hour drive!" the taxi driver was saying.

"We have money," Kate insisted. "We promise we'll pay you in full as soon as the trip's over."

"You kids must realize that since that location is outside my region, I'm gonna have to charge you for the return trip..."

"We have money," she repeated.

Reynie and Sticky looked at each other. Surely they didn't have _that_ much money.

"You're minors!" the driver said in exasperation. "What on earth do you need to go that far by yourselves for?"

"It's our home," replied Kate. "Our parents are waiting for us there." Which, they hoped, might be true.

Sticky looked at the dashboard and noticed that this taxi was equipped with a credit card machine. He reached into Rhonda's purse and pulled out the useless credit card. "Look," he said nervously. "We'll pay with this once we get there. We have permission from out parents. They can even pay you themselves, if you want."

The cab driver glanced at the sleeping toddler in Reynie's arms. He looked uncomfortable, but—possibly tempted by the fee he'd collect from such a trip—the cab driver reluctantly agreed. Glad for the warmth and comfort, the Mysterious Benedict Society piled into the seats and began the long journey toward their last remaining hope.

**::::::::**

_Zonkey: I'll have you know that some cabs in big cities DO have credit card machines. Anyway, here's your riddle for the title of the next chapter._

_The title contains five words, and the first word is "Out." As for the remainder of the title: What kind of servant both cooks and fights, is payed in eggs and bacon, and only cries louder when you feed him?_


End file.
